Flush A Biography

FLUSH

A BIOGRAPHY

By Virginia Woolf
Fiction

The Voyage Out
Night and Day
Jacob’s Room
Mrs. Dalloway
To THE Lighthouse
Orlando
The Waves

Criticism^ etc.

The Mark on the Wall
Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown
A Room of One’s Own
The Common Reader (First Series)
The Common Reader (Second Series)
Kew Gardens

A Letter to a Young Poet

Frontispi

FLUSH

A BIOGRAPHY

Virginia Woolf

PUBLISHED BY LEONARD AND VIRGINIA WOOLF AT THE
HOGARTH PRESS, 52 TAVISTOCK SQUARE, LONDON, W.G.

1933

First published^ October 1933
Ne^v Fdition, ISiovember 1933

F>i 7 ited in Gieat Britain by R. & R. Cr.ARKj Limited, Edinbuigky

CONTENTS

PAGE

CHAPTER

I. Three Mile Cross . . .7

II. The Back Bedroom . . .28

III. The Hooded Man . . 45

IV. Whitechapel . . .72

V. Italy . . .102

VI. The End . -136

Authorities . -151

Notes . . -152

illustrations

Frontispiece . . . Facing title

Miss Mitford . . Facing page 16

Mrs. Browning . . „ „ 80

End-Papers, designed by Vanessa Bell.

V

FLUSH

CHAPTER I

THREE MILE CROSS

It is universally admitted that the family from
which the subject of this memoir claims descent is
one of the greatest antiquity. Therefore it is not
strange that the origin of the name itself is lost in
obscurity. Many million years ago the country
which is now called Spain seethed uneasily in the
ferment of creation. Ages passed; vegetation ap-
peared; where there is vegetation the law of Nature
has decreed that there shall be rabbits; where there
are rabbits, Providence has ordained there shall be
dogs. There is nothing in this that calls for question
or comment. But when we ask why the dog that
caught the rabbit was called a Spaniel, then doubts
and difficulties begin. Some historians say that
when the Carthaginians landed in Spain the com-
mon soldiers shouted with one accord “Span!
Span!” — for rabbits darted from every scrub, from

7

8

FLUSH

every bush. The land was alive with rabbits. And
Span in the Carthaginian tongue signifies Rabbit.
Thus the land was called Hispania, or Rabbit-land,
and the dogs, which were almost instantly per-
ceived in full pursuit of the rabbits, were called
Spaniels or rabbit dogs.

There many of us would be content to let the
matter rest; but truth compels us to add that there
is another school of thought which thinks differ-
ently. The word Hispania, these scholars say, has
nothing whatever to do with the Carthaginian word
span, Hispania derives from the Basque word
espana^ signifying an edge or boundary. If that is so,
rabbits, bushes, dogs, soldiers — the whole of that
romantic and pleasant picture, must be dismissed
from the mind; and we must simply suppose that
the Spaniel is called a spaniel because Spain is
called Espaha. As for the third school of antiquaries
which maintains that just as a lover calls his mistress
monster or monkey, so the Spaniards called their
favourite dogs crooked or cragged (the word espana
can be made to take these meanings) because a
spaniel is notoriously the opposite — that is too fanci-
ful a conjecture to be seriously entertained.

Passing over these theories, and many more which
need not detain us here, we reach Wales in the

THREE MILE CROSS

9

middle of the tenth century. The spaniel is already
there, brought, some say, by the Spanish clan of
Ebhor or Ivor many centuries previously; and cer-
tainly by the middle of the tenth century a dog of
high repute and value. “The Spaniel of the King is
a pound in value,’’ Howel Dha laid it down in his
Book of Laws. And when we remember what the
pound could buy in the year a.d. 948 — how many
wives, slaves, horses, oxen, turkeys and geese — it is
plain that the spaniel was already a dog of value and
reputation. He had his place already by the King’s
side. His family was held in honour before those of
many famous monarchs. He was taking his ease in
palaces when the Plantagenets and the Tudors and
the Stuarts were following other people’s ploughs
through other people’s mud. Long before the
Howards, the Cavendishes or the Russells had risen
above the common ruck of Smiths, Joneses and
Tomkins, the spaniel family was a family dis-
tinguished and apart. And as the centuries took
their way, minor branches broke off frona the parent
stem. By degrees, as English history pursues its
course, there came into existence at least seven
famous Spaniel families — the Clumber, the Sussex,
the Norfolk, the Black Field, the Cocker, the Irish
Water and the English Water, all deriving from the

10

FLUSH

original spaniel of prehistoric days but showing dis-
tinct characteristics, and therefore no doubt claim-
ing privileges as distinct. That there was an aristo-
cracy of dogs by the time Queen Elizabeth was on
the throne Sir Philip Sidney bears witness: . grey-

hounds, Spaniels and Hounds”, he observes, ‘‘where-
of the first might seem the Lords, the second the
Gentlemen, and the last the Yeomen of dogs”, he
writes in the Arcadia.

But if we are thus led to assume that the Spaniels
followed human example, and looked up to Grey-
hounds as their superiors and considered Hounds
beneath them, we have to admit that their aristo-
cracy was founded on better reasons than ours. Such
at least must be the conclusion of anyone who
studies the laws of the Spaniel Club. By that august
body it is plainly laid down what constitute the
vices of a spaniel, and what constitute its virtues.
Light eyes, for example, are undesirable; curled
ears are still worse; to be born with a light nose or a
topknot is nothing less than fatal. The merits of the
spaniel are equally clearly defined. His head must
be smooth, rising without a too-decided stoop from
the muzzle; the skull must be comparatively
rounded and well developed with plenty of room for
brain power; the eyes must be full but not gozzled;

THREE MILE CROSS

II

the general expression must be one of intelligence
and gentleness. The spaniel that exhibits these
points is encouraged and bred from; the spaniel
who persists in perpetuating topknots and light
noses is cut off from the privileges and emoluments
of his kind. Thus the judges lay down the law and^
laying down the law, impose penalties and privileges
which ensure that the law shall be obeyed.

But, if we now turn to human society, what chaos
and confusion meet the eye! No Club has any such
jurisdiction upon the breed of man. The Heralds’
College is the nearest approach we have to the
Spaniel Club. It at least makes some attempt to
preserve the purity of the human family. But when
we ask what constitutes noble birth — should our
eyes be light or dark, our ears curled or straight, are
topknots fatal, our judges merely refer us to our
coats of arms. You have none perhaps. Then you
are nobody. But once make good your claim to
sixteen quarterings, prove your right to a coronet,
and then they say you are not only born, but
nobly born into the bargain. Hence it is that not a
muffineer in all Mayfair lacks its lion couchant or
its mermaid rampant. Even our linendrapers mount
the Royal Arms above their doors, as though that
were proof that their sheets are safe to sleep in.

12

FLUSH

Everywhere rank is claimed and its virtues are
asserted. Yet when we come to survey the Royal
Houses of Bourbon, Hapsburg and Hohenzollern,
decorated with how many coronets and quarterings,
couchant and rampant with how many lions and
leopards, and find them now in exile, deposed from
authority, judged unworthy of respect, we can but
shake our heads and admit that the Judges of the
Spaniel Club judged better. Such is the lesson that
is enforced directly we turn from these high matters
to consider the early life of Flush in the family of
the Mitfords.

About the end of the eighteenth century a family
of the famous spaniel breed was living near Read-
ing in the house of a certain Dr. Midford or Mit-
ford. That gentleman, in conformity with the canons
of the Heralds’ College, chose to spell his name with a

and thus claimed descent from the Northumber-
land family of the Mitfords of Bertram Castle. His
wife was a Miss Russell, and sprang, if remotely,
still decidedly from the ducal house of Bedford. But
the mating of Dr. Mitford’s ancestors had been car-
ried on with such wanton disregard for principles
that no bench of judges could have admitted his
claim to be well bred or have allowed him to per-
petuate his kind. His eyes were light; his ears were

THREE MILE CROSS

13

curled; his head exhibited the fatal topknot. In
other words, he was utterly selfish, recklessly ex-
travagant, worldly, insincere and addicted to gam-
bling. He wasted his own fortune, his wife’s fortune,
and his daughter’s earnings. He deserted them in
his prosperity and sponged upon them in his in-
firmity. Two points he had in his favour indeed,
great personal beauty — he was like an Apollo until
gluttony and intemperance changed Apollo into
Bacchus — and he was genuinely devoted to dogs.
But there can be no doubt that, had there been a
Man Club corresponding to the Spaniel Club in
existence, no spelling of Mitford with a t instead of
with a d, no calling cousins with the Mitfords of
Bertram Castle, would have availed to protect him
from contumely and contempt, from all the penal-
ties of outlawry and ostracism, from being branded
as a mongrel man unfitted to carry on his kind. But
he was a human being. Nothing therefore prevented
him from marrying a lady of birth and breeding,
from living for over eighty years, from having in his
possession several generations of greyhounds and
spaniels and from begetting a daughter.

All researches have failed to fix with any cer-
tainty the exact year of Flush’s birth, let alone the
month or the day; but it is likely that he was born

14

FLUSH

some time early in the year 1842. It is also probable
that he was directly descended from Tray {c, 1816),
whose points, preserved unfortunately only in' the
untrustworthy medium of poetry, prove him to have
been a red cocker spaniel of merit. There is every
reason to think that Flush was the son of that ^‘real
old cocking spaniel” for whom Dr. Mitford refused
twenty guineas ‘‘on account of his excellence in the
field”. It is to poetry, alas, that we have to trust for
our most detailed description of Flush himself as a
young dog. He was of that particular shade of dark
brown which in sunshine flashes “all over into
gold”. His eyes were “startled eyes of hazel bland”.
His ears were “tasselled”; his “slender feet” were
“canopied in fringes” and his tail was broad.
Making allowance for the exigencies of rhyme and
the inaccuracies of poetic diction, there is nothing
here but what would meet with the approval of the
Spaniel Club. We cannot doubt that Flush was a
pure-bred Cocker of the red variety marked by all
the characteristic excellences of his kind.

The first months of his life were passed at Three
Mile Cross, a working man’s cottage near Reading.
Since the Mitfords had fallen on evil days — Keren-
happock was the only servant — the chair-covers
were made by Miss Mitford herself and of the

THREE MILE GROSS

^5

cheapest material; the most important article of
furniture seems to have been a large table; the most
important room a large greenhouse — it is unlikely
that Flush was surrounded by any of those luxuries,
rain-proof kennels, cement walks, a maid or boy
attached to his person, that would now be accorded
a dog of his rank. But he throve; he enjoyed with all
the vivacity of his temperament most of the pleas-
ures and some of the licences natural to his youth
and sex. Miss Mitford, it is true, was much confined
to the cottage. She had to read aloud to her father
hour after hour; then to play cribbage; then, when
at last he slumbered, to write and write and write
at the table in the greenhouse in the attempt to pay
their bills and settle their debts. But at last the
longed-for moment would come. She thrust her
papers aside, clapped a hat on her head, took her
umbrella and set off for a walk across the fields with
her dogs. Spaniels are by nature sympathetic;
Flush, as his story proves, had an even excessive
appreciation of human emotions. The sight of his
dear mistress snuffing the fresh air at last, letting it
ruffle her white hair and redden the natural fresh-
ness of her face, while the lines on her huge brow
smoothed themselves out, excited him to gambols
whose wildness was half sympathy with her own

i6

FLUSH

delight. As she strode through the long grass, so he
leapt hither and thither^ parting its green curtain.
The cool globes of dew or rain broke in showers of
iridescent spray about his nose; the earth, here hard,
here soft, here hot, here cold, stung, teased and
tickled the soft pads of his feet. Then what a variety
of smells interwoven in subdest combination thrilled
his nostrils; strong smells of earth, sweet smells of
flowers; nameless smells of leaf and bramble; sour
smells as they crossed the road; pungent smells as
they entered bean-fields. But suddenly down the
wind came tearing a smell sharper, stronger, more
lacerating than any — a smell that ripped across his
brain stirring a thousand instincts, releasing a mil-
lion memories — the smell of hare, the smell of fox.
Off he flashed like a fish drawn in a rush through
water further and further. He forgot his mistress; he
forgot all human kind. He heard dark men cry
“Span! Span!*’ He heard whips crack. He raced; he
rushed. At last he stopped bewildered; the incanta-
tion faded; very slowly, wagging his tail sheepishly,
he trotted back across the fields to where Miss Mit-
ford stood shouting “Flush! Flush! Flush!” and
waving her umbrella. And once at least the call was
even more imperious; the hunting horn roused
deeper instincts, summoned wilder and stronger

MISS MITFORD

THREE MILE GROSS

17

emotions that transcended memory and obliterated
grass, trees, hare, rabbit, fox in one wild shout of
ecstasy. Love blazed her torch in his eyes; he heard
the hunting horn of Venus. Before he was well out
of his puppyhood, Flush was a father.

Such conduct in a man even, in the year 1842,
would have called for some excuse from a bio-
grapher; in a woman no excuse could have availed;
her name must have been blotted in ignominy
from the page. But the moral code of dogs, whether
better or worse, is certainly different from ours,
and there was nothing in Flush’s conduct in this
respect that requires a veil now, or unfitted him
for the society of the purest and the chastest in the
land then. There is evidence, that is to say, that
the elder brother of Dr. Pusey was anxious to buy
him. Deducing from the known character of Dr.
Pusey the probable character of his brother, there
must have been something serious, solid, promis-
ing well for future excellence whatever might be
the levity of the present in Flush even as a puppy.
But a much more significant testimony to the
attractive nature of his gifts is that, even though
Mr. Pusey wished to buy him. Miss Mitford refused
to sell him. As she was at her wits’ end for money,
scarcely knew indeed what tragedy to spin, what

B

i8

FLUSH

annual to edit, and was reduced to the repulsive
expedient of asking her friends for help, it must
have gone hard with her to refuse the sum offered
by the elder brother of Dr. Pusey. Twenty pounds
had been offered for Flush’s father. Miss Mitford
might well have asked ten or fifteen for Flush. Ten
or fifteen pounds was a princely sum, a magnificent
sum to have at her disposal. With ten or fifteen
pounds she might have re-covered her chairs, she
might have re-stocked her greenhouse, she might
have bought herself an entire wardrobe, and “ I
have not bought a bonnet, a cloak, a gown, hardly
a pair of gloves”, she wrote in 1 842, ‘Tor four years”.

But to sell Flush was unthinkable. He was of the
rare order of objects that cannot be associated with
money. Was he not of the still rarer kind that,
because they typify what is spiritual, what is beyond
price, become a fitting token of the disinterested-
ness of friendship; may be offered in that spirit
to a friend, if one is lucky enough to have one,
who is more like a daughter than a friend; to a
friend who lies secluded all through the summer
months in a back bedroom in Wimpole Street, to
a friend who is no other than England’s foremost
poetess, the brilliant, the doomed, the adored
Elizabeth Barrett herself? Such were the thoughts

THREE MILE CROSS

19

that came more and more frequently to Miss Mit-
ford as she watched Flush rolling and scampering
in the sunshine; as she sat by the couch of Miss
Barrett in her dark, ivy-shaded London bedroom.
Yes; Flush was worthy of Miss Barrett; Miss Barrett
was worthy of Flush. The sacrifice was a great one;
but the sacrifice must be made. Thus, one day,
probably in the early summer of the year 1842, a
remarkable couple might have been seen taking
their way down Wimpole Street — a very short,
stout, shabby, elderly lady, with a bright red face
and bright white hair, who led by the chain a very
spirited, very inquisitive, very well-bred golden
cocker spaniel puppy. They walked almost the
whole length of the street until at last they paused
at No. 50. Not without trepidation, Miss Mitford
rang the bell.

Even now perhaps nobody rings the bell of a
house in Wimpole Street without trepidation. It
is the most august of London streets, the most
impersonal. Indeed, when the world seems tumbling
to ruin, and civilisation rocks on its foundations, one
has only to go to Wimpole Street; to pace that
avenue; to survey those houses; to consider their
uniformity; to marvel at the window curtains and
their consistency; to admire the brass knockers and

20

FLUSH

their regularity; to observe butchers tendering
joints and cooks receiving them; to reckon the
incomes of the inhabitants and infer their con-
sequent submission to the laws of God and man —
one has only to go to Wimpole Street and drink
deep of the peace breathed by authority in order
to heave a sigh of thankfulness that, while Corinth
has fallen and Messina has tumbled, while crowns
have blown down the wind and old Empires have
gone up in flames, Wimpole Street has remained
unmoved, and, turning from Wimpole Street into
Oxford Street, a prayer rises in the heart and bursts
from the lips that not a brick of Wimpole Street may
be re-pointed, not a curtain washed, not a butcher
fail to tender or a cook to receive the sirloin, the
haunch, the breast, the ribs of mutton and beef
for ever and ever, for as long as Wimpole Street
remains, civilisation is secure.

The butlers of Wimpole Street move ponder-
ously even to-day; in the summer of 1842 they were
more deliberate still. The laws of livery were then
more stringent; the ritual of the green baize apron
for cleaning silver; of the striped waistcoat and
swallow-tail black coat for opening the hall door,
was more closely observed. It is likely then that
Miss Mitford and Flush were kept waiting at least

THREE MILE CROSS

21

three minutes and a half on the door-step. At last,
however, the door of number fifty was flung wide;
Miss Mitford and Flush were ushered in. Miss
Mitford was a frequent visitor; there was nothing
to surprise, though something to subdue her, in
the sight of the Barrett family mansion. But the
effect upon Flush must have been overwhelming
in the extreme. Until this moment he had set foot
in no house but the working man’s cottage at Three
Mile Gross. The boards there were bare; the mats
were frayed; the chairs were cheap. Here there was
nothing bare, nothing frayed, nothing cheap — that
Flush could see at a glance. Mr. Barrett, the owner,
was a rich merchant; he had a large family of
grown-up sons and daughters, and a retinue, pro-
portionately large, of servants. His house was
furnished in the fashion of the late ’thirties, with
some tincture, no doubt, of that Eastern fantasy
which had led him when he built a house in Shrop-
shire to adorn it with the domes and crescents of
Moorish architecture. Here in Wimpole Street such
extravagance would not be allowed; but we may
suppose that the high dark rooms were full of otto-
mans and carved mahogany; tables were twisted;
filigree ornaments stood upon them; daggers and
swords hung upon wine-dark walls; curious objects

22

FLUSH

brought from his East Indian property stood in
recesses, and thick rich carpets clothed the floors.

But as Flush trotted up behind Miss Mitford,
who was behind the butler, he was more astonished
by what he smelt than by what he saw. Up the
funnel of the staircase came warm whiffs of joints
roasting, of fowls basting, of soups simmering —
ravishing almost as food itself to nostrils used to the
meagre savour of Kerenhappock’s penurious fries
and hashes. Mixing with the smell of food were
further smells — smells of cedarwood and sandal-
wood and mahogany; scents of male bodies and
female bodies; of men servants and maid servants;
of coats and trousers; of crinolines and mantles;
of curtains of tapestry, of curtains of plush; of coal
dust and fog; of wine and cigars. Each room as
he passed it — dining-room, drawing-room, library,
bedroom — ^wafted out its own contribution to the
general stew; while, as he set down first one paw
and then another, each was caressed and retained
by the sensuality of rich pile carpets closing amor-
ously over it. At length they reached a closed door
at the back of the house. A gentle tap was given;
gently the door was opened.

Miss Barrett’s bedroom — for such it was — must
by all accounts have been dark. The light, normally

three mile cross

23

obscured by a curtain of green damask, was in
summer further dimmed by the ivy, the scarlet
runners, the convolvuluses and the nasturtiums
which grew in the window-box. At first Flush could
distinguish nothing in the pale greenish gloom but
five white globes glimmering mysteriously in mid-
air. But again it was the smell of the room that
overpowered him. Only a scholar who has de-
scended step by step into a mausoleum and there
finds himself in a crypt, crusted with fungus,
slimy with mould, exuding sour smells of decay
and antiquity, while half-obliterated marble busts
gleam in mid-air and all is dimly seen by the light
of the small swinging lamp which he holds, and
dips and turns, glancing now here, now there^ —
only the sensations of such an explorer into the
buried vaults of a ruined city can compare with
the riot of emotions that flooded Flush’s nerves as
he stood for the first time in an invalid’s bedroom,
in Wimpole Street, and smelt eau-de-Cologne.

Very slowly, very dimly, with much sniffing and
pawing, Flush by degrees distinguished the out-
lines of several articles of furniture. That huge
object by the window was perhaps a wardrobe.
Next to it stood, conceivably, a chest of drawers.
In the middle of the room swam up to the surface

24

FLUSH

what seemed to be a table with a ring round it; and
then the vague amorphous shapes of armchair and
table emerged. But everything was disguised. On
top of the wardrobe stood three white busts; the
chest of drawers was surmounted by a bookcase;
the bookcase was pasted over with crimson merino;
the washing-table had a coronal of shelves upon it;
on top of the shelves that were on top of the wash-
ing-table stood two more busts. Nothing in the
room was itself; everything was something else.
Even the window-blind was not a simple muslin
blind; it was a painted fabric with a design of
castles and gateways and groves of trees, and there
were several peasants taking a walk. Looking-
glasses further distorted these already distorted
objects so that there seemed to be ten busts of
ten poets instead of five; four tables instead of two.
And suddenly there was a more terrifying confusion
still. Suddenly Flush saw staring back at him from
a hole in the wall another dog with bright eyes
flashing, and tongue lolling! He paused amazed.
He advanced in awe.

Thus advancing, thus withdrawing, Flush
scarcely heard, save as the distant drone of wind
among the tree-tops, the murmur and patter of
voices talking. He pursued his investigations.

THREE MILE GROSS

25

cautiously, nervously, as an explorer in a forest softly
advances his foot, uncertain whether that shadow
is a lion, or that root a cobra. At last, however,
he was aware of huge objects in commotion over
him; and, unstrung as he was by the experiences of
the past hour, he hid himself, trembling, behind a
screen. The voices ceased. A door shut. For one
instant he paused, bewildered, unstrung. Then with
a pounce as of clawed tigers memory fell upon him.
He felt himself alone — deserted. He rushed to the
door. It was shut. He pawed, he listened. He heard
footsteps descending. He knew them for the familiar
footsteps of his mistress. They stopped. But no — on
they went, down they went. Miss Mitford was
slowly, was heavily, was reluctantly descending the
stairs. And as she went, as he heard her footsteps
fade, panic seized upon him. Door after door shut
in his face as Miss Mitford went downstairs; they
shut on freedom; on fields; on hares; on grass; on his
adored, his venerated mistress — on the dear old
woman who had washed him and beaten him and
fed him from her own plate when she had none too
much to eat herself — on all he had known of happi-
ness and love and human goodness! There! The
front door slammed. He was alone. She had de-
serted him.

26

FLUSH

Then such a wave of despair and anguish over-
whelmed him, the irrevocableness and implac-
ability of fate so smote him, that he lifted up his
head and howled aloud. A voice said “Flush”. He
did not hear it. “Flush”, it repeated a second time.
He started. He had thought himself alone. He
turned. Was there something alive in the room with
him? Was there something on the sofa? In the wild
hope that this being, whatever it was, might open
the door, that he might still rush after Miss Mitford
and find her — that this was some game of hide-and-
seek such as they used to play in the greenhouse at
home — Flush darted to the sofa.

“Oh, Flush!” said Miss Barrett. For the first time
she looked him in the face. For the first time Flush
looked at the lady lying on the sofa.

Each was surprised. Heavy curls hung down on
either side of Miss Barrett’s face; large bright eyes
shone out; a large mouth smiled. Heavy ears hung
down on either side of Flush’s face; his eyes, too,
were large and bright: his mouth was wide. There
was a likeness between them. As they gazed at each
other each felt: Here am I — and then each felt: But
how different! Hers was the pale worn face of an
invalid, cut off from air, light, freedom. His was the
warm ruddy face of a young animal; instinct with

THREE MILE CROSS

27

health and energy. Broken asunder, yet made in the
same mould, could it be that each completed what
was dormant in the other? She might have been —
all that; and he — But no. Between them lay the
widest gulf that can separate one being from
another. She spoke. He was dumb. She was woman;
he was dog. Thus closely united, thus immensely
divided, they gazed at each other. Then with one
bound Flush sprang on to the sofa and laid himself
where he was to lie for ever after — on the rug at
Miss Barrett’s feet.

CHAPTER II

THE BACK BEDROOM

The summer of 1842 was, historians tell us, not
much different from other summers, yet to Flush it
was so different that he must have doubted if the
world itself were the same. It was a summer spent
in a bedroom; a summer spent with Miss Barrett.
It was a summer spent in London, spent in the
heart of civilisation. At first he saw nothing but the
bedroom and its furniture, but that alone was sur-
prising enough. To identify, distinguish and call by
their right names all the different articles he saw
there was confusing enough. And he had scarcely
accustomed himself to the tables, to the busts, to the
washing-stands — the smell of eau-de-Cologne still
affected his nostrils disagreeably, when there came
one of those rare days which are fine but not windy,
warm but not baking, dry but not dusty, when an
invalid can take the air. The day came when Miss
Barrett could safely risk the huge adventure of
going shopping with her sister.

28

THE BACK BEDROOM

29

The carriage was ordered; Miss Barrett rose from
her sofa; veiled and muffled, she descended the
stairs. Flush of course went with her. He leapt into
the carriage by her side. Couched on her lap, the
whole pomp of London at its most splendid burst
on his astonished eyes. They drove along Oxford
Street. He saw houses made almost entirely of glass.
He saw windows laced across with glittering
streamers; heaped with gleaming mounds of pink,
purple, yellow, rose. The carriage stopped. He
entered mysterious arcades filmed with clouds and
webs of tinted gauze, A million airs from China,
from Arabia, wafted their frail incense into the
remotest fibres of his senses. Swiftly over the
counters flashed yards of gleaming silk; more darkly,
more slowly rolled the ponderous bombazine.
Scissors snipped; coins sparkled. Paper was folded;
string tied. What with nodding plumes, waving
streamers, tossing horses, yellow liveries, passing
faces, leaping, dancing up, down. Flush, satiated
with the multiplicity of his sensations, slept,
drowsed, dreamt and knew no more until he was
lifted out of the carriage and the door of Wimpole
Street shut on him again.

And next day, as the fine weather continued, Miss
Barrett ventured upon an even more daring exploit

30

FLUSH

— she had herself drawn up Wimpole Street in a
bath-chair. Again Flush went with her. For the first
time he heard his nails click upon the hard paving-
stones of London. For the first time the whole bat-
tery of a London street on a hot summer’s day
assaulted his nostrils. He smelt the swooning smells
that lie in the gutters; the bitter smells that corrode
iron railings; the fuming, heady smells that rise
from basements — smells more complex, corrupt,
violently contrasted and compounded than any he
had smelt in the fields near Reading; smells that lay
far beyond the range of the human nose; so that while
the chair went on, he stopped, amazed; defining,
savouring, until a jerk at his collar dragged him on.
And also, as he trotted up Wimpole Street behind
Miss Barrett’s chair he was dazed by the passage of

human bodies. Petticoatsswishedathishead; trousers

brushed his flanks; sometimes a wheel whizzed an
inch from his nose; the wind of destruction roared
in his ears and fanned the feathers of his paws as a
van passed. Then he plunged in terror. Mercifully
the chain tugged at his collar; Miss Barrett held
him tight, or he would have rushed to destruction.

At last, with every nerve throbbing and every
sense singing, he reached Regent’s Park. And then
when he saw once more, after years of absence it

THE BACK BEDROOM

31

seemed, grass, flowers and trees, the old hunting cry
of the fields hallooed in his ears and he dashed for-
ward to run as he had run in the fields at home.
But now a heavy weight jerked at his throat; he was
thrown back on his haunches. Were there not trees
and grass? he asked. Were these not the signals
of freedom? Had he not always leapt forward
direcdy Miss Mitford started on her walk? Why was
he a prisoner here? He paused. Here, he observed,
the flowers were massed far more thickly than at
home; they stood, plant by plant, rigidly in narrow
plots. The plots were intersected by hard black
paths. Men in shiny top-hats marched ominously
up and down the paths. At the sight of them he
shuddered closer to the chair. He gladly accepted
the protection of the chain. Thus before many of
these walks were over a new conception had entered
his brain. Setting one thing beside another, he had
arrived at a conclusion. Where there are flower-beds
there are asphalt paths; where there are flower-
beds and asphalt paths, there are men in shiny
top-hats; where there are flower-beds and asphalt
paths and men in shiny top-hats, dogs must be
led on chains. Without being able to decipher a
word of the placard at the Gate, he had learnt his
lesson — in Regent’s Park dogs must be led on chains.

32

FLUSH

And to this nucleus of knowledge, born from the
strange experiences of the summer of 1842, soon ad-
hered another; dogs are not equal, but different.
At Three Mile Cross Flush had mixed impartially
with tap-room dogs and the Squire’s greyhounds;
he had known no difference between the tinker’s
dog and himself. Indeed it is probable that the
mother of his child, though by courtesy called
Spaniel, was nothing but a mongrel, eared in one
way, tailed in another. But the dogs of London,
Flush soon discovered, are strictly divided into
different classes. Some are chained dogs; some run
wild. Some take their airings in carriages and drink
from purple jars; others are unkempt and uncol-
lared and pick up a living in the gutter. Dogs there-
fore, Flush began to suspect, differ; some are high,
others low; and his suspicions were confirmed by
snatches of talk held in passing with the dogs of
Wimpole Street. “See that scallywag? A mere
mongrel! ... By gad, that’s a fine Spaniel. One of
the best blood in Britain! . . . Pity his ears aren’t a
shade more curly. . . . There’s a topknot for you!”

From such phrases, from the accent of praise or
derision in which they were spoken, at the pillar-
box or outside the public-house where the footmen
were exchanging racing tips. Flush knew before the

THE BACK BEDROOM

33

summer had passed that there is no equality
among dogs: some dogs are high dogs; some are
low. Which, then, was he? No sooner had Flush
got home than he examined himself carefully in the
looking-glass. Heaven be praised, he was a dog of
birth and breeding! His head was smooth; his eyes
were prominent but not gozzled; his feet were
feathered; he was the equal of the best-bred cocker
in Wimpole Street. He noted with approval the
purple jar from which he drank — such are the
privileges of rank; he bent his head quietly to have
the chain fixed to his collar — such are its penalties.
When about this time Miss Barrett observed him
staring in the glass, she was mistaken. He was a
philosopher, she thought, meditating the difference
between appearance and reality. On the contrary,
he was an aristocrat considering his points.

But the fine summer days were soon over; the
autumn winds began to blow; and Miss Barrett
settled down to a life of complete seclusion in her
bedroom. Flush’s life was also changed. His outdoor
education was supplemented by that of the bed-
room, and this, to a dog of Flush’s temperament,
was the most drastic that could have been invented.
His only airings, and these were brief and perfunc-
tory, were taken in the company of Wilson, Miss

C

34

FLUSH

Barrett’s maid. For the rest of the day he kept his
station on the sofa at Miss Barrett’s feet. All his
natural instincts were thwarted and contradicted.
When the autumn winds had blown last year in
Berkshire he had run in wild scampering across the
stubble; now at the sound of the ivy tapping on the
pane Miss Barrett asked Wilson to see to the fasten-
ings of the window. When the leaves of the scarlet
runners and nasturtiums in the window-box yel-
lowed and fell she drew her Indian shawl more
closely round her. When the October rain lashed
the window Wilson lit the fire and heaped up the
coals. Autumn deepened into winter and the first
fogs jaundiced the air. Wilson and Flush could
scarcely grope their way to the pillar-box or to the
chemist. When they came back, nothing could be
seen in the room but the pale busts glimmering
wanly on the tops of the wardrobes; the peasants
and the castle had vanished on the blind; blank
yellow filled the pane. Flush felt that he and Miss
Barrett lived alone together in a cushioned and -fire-
lit cave. The traffic droned on perpetually outside
with muffled reverberations; now and again a voice
went calling hoarsely, “Old chairs and baskets to
mend”, down the street: sometimes there was a
jangle of organ music, coming nearer and louder;

THE BACK BEDROOM

35

going further and fading away. But none of these
sounds meant freedom, or action, or exercise. The
wind and the rain, the wild days of autumn and the
cold days of mid-winter, all alike meant nothing to
Flush except warmth and stillness; the lighting of
lamps, the drawing of curtains and the poking of
the fire.

At first the strain was too great to be borne. He
could not help dancing round the room on a windy
autumn day when the partridges must be scattering
over the stubble. He thought he heard guns on the
breeze. He could not help running to the door with
his hackles raised when a dog barked outside. And
yet when Miss Barrett called him back, when she
laid her hand on his collar, he could not deny that
another feeling, urgent, contradictory, disagree-
able — he did not know what to call it or why he
obeyed it — restrained him. He lay still at her feet.
To resign, to control, to suppress the most violent
instincts of his nature — that was the prime lesson
of the bedroom school, and it was one of such
portentous difficulty that many scholars have
learnt Greek with less — ^many battles have been
won that cost their generals not half such pain.
But then. Miss Barrett was the teacher. Between
them, Flush felt more and more strongly, as the

36

FLUSH

weeks wore on, was a bond, an uncomfortable yet
thrilling tightness ; so that if his pleasure was her
pain, then his pleasure was pleasure no longer but
three parts pain. The truth of this was proved every
day. Somebody opened the door and whistled him
to come. Why should he not go out? He longed for
air and exercise; his limbs were cramped with
lying on the sofa. He had never grown altogether
used to the smell of eau-de-Cologne. But no — though
the door stood open, he would not leave Miss
Barrett. He hesitated half-way to the door and
then went back to the sofa. ‘Tlushie’^ wrote Miss
Barrett, ‘^is my friend — ^my companion — and loves
me better than he loves the sunshine without.”
She could not go out. She was chained to the sofa.
“A bird in a cage would have as good a story”, she
wrote, as she had. And Flush, to whom the whole
world was free, chose to forfeit all the smells of
Wimpole Street in order to lie by her side.

And yet sometimes the tie would almost break;
there were vast gaps in their understanding. Some-
times they would lie and stare at each other in
blank bewilderment. Why, Miss Barrett wondered,
did Flush tremble suddenly, and whimper and start
and listen? She could hear nothing; she could see
nothing; there was nobody in the room with them.

THE BACK BEDROOM

37

She could not guess that Folly, her sister’s little
King Charles, had passed the door; or that Catiline
the Cuba bloodhound had been given a mutton-
bone by a footman in the basement. But Flush
knew; he heard; he was ravaged by the alternate
rages of lust and greed. Then with all her poet’s
imagination Miss Barrett could not divine what
Wilson’s wet umbrella meant to Flush; what
memories it recalled, of forests and parrots and wild
trumpeting elephants; nor did she know, when
Mr. Kenyon stumbled over the bell-pull, that Flush
heard dark men cursing in the mountains; the cry,
‘‘Spanl Span!” rang in his ears, and it was in some
muffled, ancestral rage that he bit him.

Flush was equally at a loss to account for Miss
Barrett’s emotions. There she would lie hour after
hour passing her hand over a white page with a
black stick; and her eyes would suddenly fill with
tears; but why? ‘‘Ah, my dear Mr. Horne”, she was
writing. “And then came the failure in my health
. . . and then the enforced exile to Torquay . . .
which gave a nightmare to my life for ever, and
robbed it of more than I can speak of here; do not
speak of that anywhere. Do not speak of that, dear
Mr. Horne.” But there was no sound in the room,
no smell to make Miss Barrett cry. Then again

38

FLUSH

Miss Barrett, still agitating her stick, burst out
laughing. She had drawn "‘a very neat and char-
acteristic portrait of Flush, humorously made
rather like myself”, and she had written under it
that it “only fails of being an excellent substitute
for mine through being more worthy than I can
be counted”. What was there to laugh at in the
black smudge that she held out for Flush to look
at? He could smell nothing; he could hear nothing.
There was nobody in the room with them. The
fact was that they could not communicate with
words, and it was a fact that led undoubtedly to
much misunderstanding. Yet did it not lead also
to a peculiar intimacy? “Writing”, Miss Barrett
once exclaimed after a morning’s toil, “writing,
writing ...” After all, she may have thought, do
words say everything? Gan words say anything? Do
not words destroy the symbol that lies beyond the
reach of words? Once at least Miss Barrett seems to
have found it so. She was lying, thinking; she had
forgotten Flush altogether, and her thoughts were
so sad that the tears fell upon the pillow. Then sud-
denly a hairy head was pressed against her; large
bright eyes shone in hers; and she started. Was it
Flush, or was it Pan? Was she no longer an invalid
in Wimpole Street, but a Greek nymph in some dim

THE BACK BEDROOM

39

grove in Arcady? And did the bearded god himself
press his lips to hers? For a moment she was trans-
formed; she was a nymph and Flush was Pan. The
sun burnt and love blazed. But suppose Flush had
been able to speak — would he not have said some-
thing sensible about the potato disease in Ireland?

So, too, Flush felt strange stirrings at work within
him. When he saw Miss Barrett’s thin hands deli-
cately lifting some silver box or pearl ornament
from the ringed table, his own furry paws seemed
to contract and he longed that they should fine
themselves to ten separate fingers. When he heard
her low voice syllabling innumerable sounds, he
longed for the day when his own rough roar would
issue like hers in the little simple sounds that had
such mysterious meaning. And when he watched
the same fingers for ever crossing a white page with
a straight stick, he longed for the time when he too
should blacken paper as she did.

And yet, had he been able to write as she did?
— ^The question is superfluous happily, for truth
compels us to say that in the year 1842-43 Miss
Barrett was not a nymph but an invalid; Flush was
not a poet but a red cocker spaniel; and Wimpole
Street was not Arcady but Wimpole Street.

So the long hours went by in the back bedroom

40

FLUSH

with nothing to mark them but the sound of steps
passing on the stairs; and the distant sound of the
front door shutting, and the sound of a broom tap-
ping, and the sound of the postman knocking. In the
room coals clicked; the lights and shadows shifted
themselves over the brows of the five pale busts,
over the bookcase and its red merino. But some-
times the step on the stair did not pass the door; it
stopped outside. The handle was seen to spin
round; the door actually opened; somebody came
in. Then how strangely the furniture changed its
look! What extraordinary eddies of sound and smell
were at once set in circulation! How they washed
round the legs of tables and impinged on the sharp
edges of the wardrobe! Probably it was Wilson, with
a tray of food or a glass of medicine; or it might be
one of Miss Barrett’s two sisters — Arabel or Henri-
etta; or it might be one of Miss Barrett’s seven
brothers — Charles, Samuel, George, Henry, Alfred,
Septimus or Octavius. But once or twice a week
Flush was aware that something more important
was about to happen. The bed would be carefully
disguised as a sofa. The armchair would be drawn
up beside it; Miss Barrett herself would be wrapped
becomingly in Indian shawls; the toilet things
would be scrupulously hidden under the busts of

THE BACK BEDROOM

41

Chaucer and Homer; Flush himself would be
combed and brushed. At about two or three in the
afternoon there was a peculiar, distinct and differ-
ent tap at the door. Miss Barrett flushed, smiled and
stretched out her hand. Then in would come — per-
haps dear Miss Mitford, rosy and shiny and chat-
tering, with a bunch of geraniums. Or it might be
Mr. Kenyon, a stout, well-groomed elderly gentle-
man, radiating benevolence, provided with a book.
Or it might be Mrs. Jameson, a lady who was the
very opposite of Mr. Kenyon to look at — a lady with
‘‘a very light complexion — ^pale, lucid eyes; thin
colourless lips ... a nose and chin projective with-
out breadth’’. Each had his or her own manner,
smell, tone and accent. Miss Mitford burbled and
chattered, was fly-away yet substantial; Mr. Ken-
yon was urbane and cultured and mumbled slighdy
because he had lost two front teeth; Mrs. Jameson
had lost none of her teeth, and moved as sharply
and precisely as she spoke.

Lying couched at Miss Barrett’s feet, Flush let the
voices ripple over him, hour by hour. On and on
they went. Miss Barrett laughed, expostulated, ex-
claimed, sighed too, and laughed again. At last,
greatly to Flush’s relief, little silences came — even in
the flow of Miss Mitford’s conversation. Gould it be

42

FLUSH

seven already? She had been there since midday!
She must really run to catch her train. Mr. Kenyon
shut his book — he had been reading aloud — and
stood with his back to the fire; Mrs. Jameson with a
sharp, angular movement pressed each finger of her
glove sharp down. And Flush was patted by this one
and had his ear pulled by another. The routine of
leave-taking was intolerably prolonged; but at last
Mrs. Jameson, Mr. Kenyon, and even Miss Mitford
had risen, had said good-bye, had remembered
something, had lost something, had found some-
thing, had reached the door, had opened it, and
were — Heaven be praised — gone at last.

Miss Barrett sank back very white, very tired on
her pillows. Flush crept closer to her. Mercifully
they were alone again. But the visitor had stayed so
long that it was almost dinner-time. Smells began
to rise from the basement. Wilson was at the door
with Miss Barrett’s dinner on a tray. It was set down
on the table beside her and the covers lifted. But
what with the dressing and the talking, what with
the heat of the room and the agitation of the fare-
wells, Miss Barrett was too tired to eat. She gave a
little sigh when she saw the plump mutton chop, or
the wing of partridge or chicken that had been sent
up for her dinner. So long as Wilson was in the

THE BACK BEDROOM

43

room she fiddled about with her knife and fork. But
directly the door was shut and they were alone, she
made a sign. She held up her fork. A whole chicken’s
wing was impaled upon it. Flush advanced. Miss
Barrett nodded. Very gently, very cleverly, without
spilling a crumb, Flush removed the wing; swal-
lowed it down and left no trace behind. Half a rice
pudding clotted with thick cream went the same
way. Nothing could have been neater, more effect-
ive than Flush’s co-operation. He was lying
couched as usual at Miss Barrett’s feet, apparently
asleep, Miss Barrett was lying rested and restored,
apparently having made an excellent dinner, when
once more a step that was heavier, more deliberate
and firmer than any other, stopped on the stair;
solemnly a knock sounded that was no tap of
enquiry but a demand for admittance; the door
opened and in came the blackest, the most for-
midable of elderly men — Mr, Barrett himself. His
eye at once sought the tray. Had the meal been
eaten? Had his commands been obeyed? Yes, the
plates were empty. Signifying his approval of his
daughter’s obedience, Mr. Barrett lowered himself
heavily into the chair by her side. As that dark body
approached him, shivers of terror and horror ran
down Flush’s spine. So a savage couched in flowers

44

FLUSH

shudders when the thunder growls and he hears the
voice of God. Then Wilson whistled; and Flush,
slinking guiltily, as if Mr. Barrett could read his
thoughts and those thoughts were evil, crept out of
the room and rushed downstairs. A force had
entered the bedroom which he dreaded; a force that
he was powerless to withstand. Once he burst in un-
expectedly. Mr. Barrett was on his knees praying by
his daughter’s side.

CHAPTER III

THE HOODED MAN

Such an education as this, in the back bedroom at
Wimpole Street, would have told upon an ordinary
dog. And Flush was not an ordinary dog. He was
high-spirited, yet reflective; canine, but highly
sensitive to human emotions also. Upon such a dog
the atmosphere of the bedroom told with peculiar
force. We cannot blame him if his sensibility was
cultivated rather to the detriment of his sterner
qualities. Naturally, lying with his head pillowed
on a Greek lexicon, he came to dislike barking and
biting; he came to prefer the silence of the cat to
the robustness of the dog; and human sympathy to
either. Miss Barrett, too, did her best to refine and
educate his powers still further. Once she took a
harp from the window and asked him, as she laid
it by his side, whether he thought that the harp,
which made music, was itself alive? He looked and
listened; pondered, it seemed, for a moment in
doubt and then decided that it was not. Then she

45

46

FLUSH

would make him stand with her in front of the
looking-glass and ask him why he barked and
trembled. Was not the little brown dog opposite
himself? But what is^oneself’’? Is it the thing people
see? Or is it the thing one is? So Flush pondered
that question too, and, unable to solve the problem
of reality, pressed closer to Miss Barrett and kissed
her ‘‘expressively”. That was real at any rate.

Fresh from such problems, with such emotional
dilemmas agitating his nervous system, he went
downstairs, and we cannot be surprised if there was
something — a touch of the supercilious, of the
superior — in his bearing that roused the rage of
Catiline, the savage Cuba bloodhound, so that he
set upon him and bit him and sent him howling
upstairs to Miss Barrett for sympathy. Flush “is
no hero”, she concluded; but why was he no hero?
Was it not partly on her account? She was too just
not to realise that it was for her that he had sacri-
ficed his courage, as it was for her that he had
sacrificed the sun and the air. This nervous sensi-
bility had its drawbacks, no doubt — she was full
of apologies when he flew at Mr. Kenyon and bit
him for stumbling over the bell-pull; it was annoy-
ing when he moaned piteously all night because
he was not allowed to sleep on her bed — ^when

THE HOODED MAN

47

he refused to eat unless she fed him; but she took
the blame and bore the inconvenience because, after
all, Flush loved her. He had refused the air and
the sun for her sake, “He is worth loving, is he not?’’
she asked of Mr. Horne. And whatever answer
Mr. Horne might give. Miss Barrett was positive of
her own. She loved Flush, and Flush was worthy
of her love.

It seemed as if nothing were to break that tie —
as if the years were merely to compact and cement
it; and as if those years were to be all the years of
their natural lives. Eighteen-forty-two turned into
eighteen-forty-three; eighteen-forty-three into eigh-
teen-forty-four; eighteen-forty-four into eighteen-
forty-five. Flush was no longer a puppy; he was a
dog of four or five; he was a dog in the full prime of
life — and still Miss Barrett lay on her sofa in Wim-
pole Street and still Flush lay on the sofa at her
feet. Miss Barrett’s life was the life of “a bird in its
cage”. She sometimes kept the house for weeks at
a time, and when she left it, it was only for an hour
or two, to drive to a shop in a carriage, or to be
wheeled to Regent’s Park in a bath-chair. The
Barretts never left London. Mr. Barrett, the seven
brothers, the two sisters, the butler, Wilson and
the maids, Catiline, Folly, Miss Barrett and Flush

48

FLUSH

all went on living at 50 Wimpole Street, eating in
the dining-room, sleeping in the bedrooms,
smoking in the study, cooking in the kitchen,
carrying hot-water cans and emptying the slops
from January to December. The chair-covers be-
came slightly soiled; the carpets slightly worn;
coal dust, mud, soot, fog, vapours of cigar smoke
and wine and meat accumulated in crevices, in
cracks, in fabrics, on the tops of picture-frames, in
the scrolls of carvings. And the ivy that hung over
Miss Barrett’s bedroom window flourished; its
green curtain became thicker and thicker, and in
summer the nasturtiums and the scarlet runners
rioted together in the window-box.

But one night early in January 1845 postman
knocked. Letters fell into the box as usual. Wilson
went downstairs to fetch the letters as usual.
Everything was as usual — every night the postman
knocked, every night Wilson fetched the letters,
every night there was a letter for Miss Barrett.
But to-night the letter was not the same letter; it
was a different letter. Flush saw that, even before
the envelope was broken. He knew it from the way
that Miss Barrett took it; turned it; looked at the
vigorous, jagged writing of her name. He knew it
from the indescribable tremor in her fingers, from

THE HOODED MAN

49

the impetuosity with which they tore the flap open,
from the absorption with which she read. He
watched her read. And as she read he heard, as
when we are half asleep we hear through the
clamour of the street some bell ringing and know
that it is addressed to us, alarmingly yet faintly,
as if someone far away were trying to rouse us with
the warning of fire, or burglary, or some menace
against our peace and we start in alarm before we
wake — so Flush, as Miss Barrett read the little
blotted sheet, heard a bell rousing him from his
sleep; warning him of some danger; menacing his
safety and bidding him sleep no more. Miss Barrett
read the letter quickly; she read the letter slowly;
she returned it carefully to its envelope. She too
slept no more.

Again, a few nights later, there was the same
letter on Wilson’s tray. Again it was read quickly,
read slowly, read over and over again. Then it was
put away carefully, not in the drawer with the
voluminous sheets of Miss Mitford’s letters, but by
itself. Now Flush paid the full price of long years of
accumulated sensibility lying couched on cushions
at Miss Barrett’s feet. He could read signs that no-
body else could even see. He could tell by the touch
of Miss Barrett’s fingers that she was waiting for one

D

50

FLUSH

thing only — ^for the postman’s knock, for the letter on
the tray. She would be stroking him perhaps with a
light, regular movement; suddenly — there was the
rap — her fingers constricted; he would be held in a
vice while Wilson came upstairs. Then she took the
letter and he was loosed and forgotten.

Yet, he argued, what was there to be afraid of, so
long as there was no change in Miss Barrett’s life?
And there was no change. No new visitors came.
Mr. Kenyon came as usual; Miss Mitford came as
usual. The brothers and sisters came; and in the
evening Mr. Barrett came. They noticed nothing;
they suspected nothing. So he would quieten him-
self and try to believe, when a few nights passed
without the envelope, that the enemy had gone. A
man in a cloak, he imagined, a cowled and hooded
figure, had passed, like a burglar, rattling the door,
and finding it guarded, had slunk away defeated.
The danger. Flush tried to make himself believe,
was over. The man had gone. And then the letter
came again.

As the envelopes came more and more regularly,
night after night, Flush began to notice signs of
change in Miss Barrett herself. For the first time in
Flush’s experience she was irritable and restless.
She could not read and she could not write. She

THE HOODED MAN

51

Stood at the window and looked out. She questioned
Wilson anxiously about the weather — was the wind
still in the east? Was there any sign of spring in the
Park yet? Oh no, Wilson replied; the wind was a
cruel east wind still. And Miss Barrett, Flush felt,
was at once relieved and annoyed. She coughed.
She complained of feeling ill — but not so ill as she
usually felt when the wind was in the east. And
then, when she was alone, she read over again last
night’s letter. It was the longest she had yet had.
There were many pages, closely covered, darkly
blotted, scattered with strange little abrupt hiero-
glyphics. So much Flush could see, from his station
at her feet. But he could make no sense of the words
that Miss Barrett was murmuring to herself. Only
he could trace her agitation when she came to the
end of the page and read aloud (though unintelli-
gibly), '‘Do you think I shall see you in two months,
three months?”

Then she took up her pen and passed it rapidly
and nervously over sheet after sheet. But what did
they mean — the little words that Miss Barrett
wrote? “April is coming. There will be both a May
and a June if we live to see such things, and perhaps,
after all, we may ... I will indeed see you when the
warm weather has revived me a little. . . . But I

52

FLUSH

shall be afraid of you at first — though I am not, in
writing thus. You are Paracelsus, and I am a recluse,
with nerves that have been broken on the rack, and
now hang loosely, quivering at a step and breath.”

Flush could not read what she was writing an
inch or two above his head. But he knew just as well
as if he could read every word, how strangely his
mistress was agitated as she wrote; what contrary
desires shook her — that April might come; that
April might not come; that she might see this un-
known man at once, that she might never see him
at all. Flush, too, quivered as she did at a step, at a
breath. And remorselessly the days went on. The
wind blew out the blind. The sun whitened the
busts. A bird sang in the mews. Men went crying
fresh flowers to sell down Wimpole Street. All these
sounds meant, he knew, that April was coming and
May and June — nothing could stop the approach of
that dreadful spring. For what was coming with the
spring? Some terror — some horror — something that
Miss Barrett dreaded, and that Flush dreaded too.
He started now at the sound of a step. But it was
only Henrietta. Then there was a knock. It was only
Mr. Kenyon. So April passed; and the first twenty
days of May. And then, on the 21st of May, Flush
knew that the day itself had come. For on Tuesday,

THE HOODED MAN

53

the 2 1 St of May, Miss Barrett looked searchingly in
the glass; arrayed herself exquisitely in her Indian
shawls; bade Wilson draw the armchair close, but
not too close; touched this, that and the other; and
then sat upright among her pillows. Flush couched
himself taut at her feet. They waited, alone to-
gether. At last, Marylebone Church clock struck
two; they waited. Then Marylebone Church clock
struck a single stroke — It was half-past two; and as
the single stroke died away, a rap sounded boldly
on the front door. Miss Barrett turned pale; she lay
very still. Flush lay still too. Upstairs came the
dreaded, the inexorable footfall; upstairs, Flush
knew, came the cowled and sinister figure of mid-
night — the hooded man. Now his hand was on the
door. The handle spun. There he stood.

“Mr. Browning”, said Wilson.

Flush, watching Miss Barrett, saw the colour rush
into her face; saw her eyes brighten and her lips
open.

“Mr. Browning 1” she exclaimed.

Twisting his yellow gloves in his hands, blinking
his eyes, well groomed, masterly, abrupt, Mr.
Browning strode across the room. He seized Miss
Barrett’s hand, and sank into the chair by the sofa
at her side. Instantly they began to talk.

54

FLUSH

What was horrible to Flush, as they talked, was
his loneliness. Once he had felt that he and Miss
Barrett were together, in a firelit cave. Now the
cave was no longer firelit; it was dark and damp;
Miss Barrett was outside. He looked round him.
Everything had changed. The bookcase, the five
busts — they were no longer friendly deities pre-
siding approvingly — they were hostile, severe. He
shifted his position at Miss Barrett’s feet. She took
no notice. He whined. They did not hear him. At
last he lay still in tense and silent agony. The talk
went on; but it did not flow and ripple as talk
usually flowed and rippled. It leapt and jerked. It
stopped and leapt again. Flush had never heard
that sound in Miss Barrett’s voice before — that
vigour, that excitement. Her cheeks were bright
as he had never seen them bright; her great eyes
blazed as he had never seen them blaze. The clock
struck four; and still they talked. Then it struck
half-past four. At that Mr. Browning jumped up.
A horrid decision, a dreadful boldness marked
every movement. In another moment he had
wrung Miss Barrett’s hand in his; he had taken his
hat and gloves; he had said good-bye. They heard
him running down the stairs. Smartly the door
banged behind him. He was gone.

THE HOODED MAN

55

But Miss Barrett did not sink back in her pillows
as she sank back when Mr. Kenyon or Miss Mitford
left her. Now she still sat upright; her eyes still
burnt; her cheeks still glowed; she seemed still to
feel that Mr. Browning was with her. Flush touched
her. She recalled him with a start. She patted him
lightly, joyfully, on the head. And smiling, she gave
him the oddest look — as if she wished that he could
talk — as if she expected him too to feel what she
felt. And then she laughed, pityingly; as if it were
absurd — Flush, poor Flush could feel nothing of
what she felt. He could know nothing of what she
knew. Never had such wastes of dismal distance
separated them. He lay there ignored; he might
not have been there, he felt. Miss Barrett no longer
remembered his existence.

And that night she ate her chicken to the bone.
Not a scrap of potato or of skin was thrown
to Flush. When Mr. Barrett came as usual, Flush
marvelled at his obtuseness. He sat himself down
in the very chair that the man had sat in. His head
pressed the same cushions that the man’s had
pressed, and yet he noticed nothing. “Don’t you
know”. Flush marvelled, “who’s been sitting in that
chair? Can’t you smell him?” For to Flush the whole
room still reeked of Mr. Browning’s presence. The

56

FLUSH

air dashed past the bookcase, and eddied and
curled round the heads of the five pale busts. But
the heavy man sat by his daughter in entire self-
absorption. He noticed nothing. He suspected
nothing. Aghast at his obtuseness. Flush slipped
past him out of the room.

But in spite of their astonishing blindness, even
Miss Barrett’s family began to notice, as the weeks
passed, a change in Miss Barrett. She left her room
and went down to sit in the drawing-room. Then
she did what she had not done for many a long day
— she actually walked on her own feet as far as the
gate at Devonshire Place with her sister. Her
friends, her family, were amazed at her improve-
ment. But only Flush knew where her strength
came from — ^it came from the dark man in the arm-
chair. He came again and again and again. First
it was once a week; then it was twice a week. He
came always in the afternoon and left in the after-
noon. Miss Barrett always saw him alone. And on
the days when he did not come, his letters came.
And when he himself was gone, his flowers were
there. And in the mornings when she was alone,
Miss Barrett wrote to him. That dark, taut, abrupt,
vigorous man, with his black hair, his red cheeks
and his yellow gloves, was everywhere. Naturally,

THE HOODED MAN

57

Miss Barrett was better; of course she could walk.
Flush himself felt that it was impossible to lie still.
Old longings revived; a new restlessness possessed
him. Even his sleep was full of dreams. He dreamt
as he had not dreamt since the old days at Three
Mile Gross — of hares starting from the long grass;
of pheasants rocketing up with long tails streaming,
of partridges rising with a whirr from the stubble.
He dreamt that he was hunting, that he was chas-
ing some spotted spaniel, who fled, who escaped
him. He was in Spain; he was in Wales; he was
in Berkshire; he was flying before park-keepers’
truncheons in Regent’s Park. Then he opened his
eyes. There were no hares, and no partridges; no
whips cracking and no black men crying “Span!
Span!” There was only Mr. Browning in the arm-
chair talking to Miss Barrett on the sofa.

Sleep became impossible while that man was
there. Flush lay with his eyes wide open, listening.
Though he could make no sense of the little words
that hurtled over his head from two-thirty to four-
thirty sometimes three times a week, he could detect
with terrible accuracy that the tone of the words
was changing. Miss Barrett’s voice had been forced
and unnaturally lively at first. Now it had gained a
warmth and an ease that he had never heard in it

58

FLUSH

before. And every time the man came, some new
sound came into their voices — now they made a
grotesque chattering; now they skimmed over him
like birds flying widely; now they cooed and clucked,
as if they were two birds settled in a nest; and
then Miss Barrett’s voice, rising again, went soaring
and circling in the air; and then Mr. Browning’s
voice barked out its sharp, harsh clapper of laugh-
ter; and then there was only a murmur, a quiet
humming sound as the two voices joined together.
But as the summer turned to autumn Flush noted,
with horrid apprehension, another note. There was
a new urgency, a new pressure and energy in the
man’s voice, at which Miss Barrett, Flush felt, took
fright. Her voice fluttered; hesitated; seemed to
falter and fade and plead and gasp, as if she were
begging for a rest, for a pause, as if she were afraid.
Then the man was silent.

Of him they took but little notice. He might have
been a log of wood lying there at Miss Barrett’s feet
for all the attention Mr. Browning paid him. Some-
times he scrubbed his head in a brisk, spasmodic
way, energetically, without sentiment, as he passed
him. Whatever that scrub might mean, Flush felt
nothing but an intense dislike for Mr. Browning.
The very sight of him, so well tailored, so tight, so

THE HOODED MAN

59

muscular, screwing his yellow gloves in his hand,
set his teeth on edge. Oh! to let them meet sharply,
completely in the stuff of his trousers! And yet he
dared not. Taking it all in all, that winter — 1845-6
— ^was the most distressing that Flush had ever
known.

The winter passed; and spring came round again.
Flush could see no end to the affair; and yet just
as a river, though it reflects still trees and grazing
cows and rooks returning to the tree-tops, moves in-
evitably to a waterfall, so those days. Flush knew,
were moving to catastrophe. Rumours of change
hovered in the air. Sometimes he thought that some
vast exodus impended. There was that indefinable
stir in the house which precedes — could it be pos-
sible? — a journey. Boxes were actually dusted, were,
incredible as it might seem, opened. Then they
were shut again. No, it was not the family that was
going to move. The brothers and sisters still went in
and out as usual. Mr. Barrett paid his nightly visit,
after the man had gone, at his accustomed hour.
What was it, then, that was going to happen? for as
the summer of 1846 wore on, Flush was positive that
a change was coming. He could hear it again in the
altered sound of the eternal voices. Miss Barrett’s
voice, that had been pleading and afraid, lost its

6o

FLUSH

faltering note. It rang out with a determination and
a boldness that Flush had never heard in it before.
If only Mr. Barrett could hear the tone in which
she welcomed this usurper, the laugh with which
she greeted him, the exclamation with which he
took her hand in his! But nobody was in the room
with them except Flush. To him the change was of
the most galling nature. It was not merely that Miss
Barrett was changing towards Mr. Browning — she
was changing in every relation — in her feeling to-
wards Flush himself. She treated his advances more
brusquely; she cut short his endearments laugh-
ingly; she made him feel that there was something
petty, silly, affected, in his old affectionate ways.
His vanity was exacerbated. His jealousy was in-
flamed. At last, when July came, he determined to
make one violent attempt to regain her favour, and
perhaps to oust the newcomer. How to accomplish
this double purpose he did not know, and could not
plan. But suddenly on the 8th of July his feelings
overcame him. He flung himself on Mr. Browning
and bit him savagely. At last his teeth met in the
immaculate cloth of Mr. Browning’s trousers 1 But
the limb inside was hard as iron — Mr. Kenyon’s
leg had been butter in comparison. Mr. Browning
brushed him off with a flick of his hand and went on

THE HOODED MAN

6l

talking. Neither he nor Miss Barrett seemed to think
the attack worthy of attention. Completely foiled,
worsted, without a shaft left in his sheath. Flush
sank back on his cushions panting with rage and
disappointment. But he had misjudged Miss Bar-
rett’s insight. When Mr. Browning was gone, she
called him to her and inflicted upon him the worst
punishment he had ever known. First she slapped
his ears — that was nothing; oddly enough the slap
was rather to his liking; he would have welcomed
another. But then she said in her sober, certain
tones that she would never love him again. That
shaft went to his heart. All these years they had
lived together, shared everything together, and
now, for one moment’s failure, she would never love
him again. Then, as if to make her dismissal com-
plete, she took the flowers that Mr. Browning had
brought her and began to put them in water in a
vase. It was an act, Flush thought, of calculated and
deliberate malice; an act designed to make him feel
his own insignificance completely. “This rose is
from him”, she seemed to say, “and this carnation.
Let the red shine by the yellow; and the yellow by
the red. And let the green leaf lie there — ” And, set-
ting one flower with another, she stood back to gaze
at them as if he were before her — the man in the

62

FLUSH

yellow gloves — a mass of brilliant flowers. But even
so, even as she pressed the leaves and flowers to-
gether, she could not altogether ignore the fixity
with which Flush gazed at her. She could not deny
that ‘'expression of quite despair on his face’’. She
could not but relent. “At last I said, ‘If you are
good, Flush, you may come and say that you are
sorry’, on which he dashed across the room and,
trembling all over, kissed first one of my hands and
then another, and put up his paws to be shaken, and
looked into my face with such beseeching eyes that
you would certainly have forgiven him just as I
did.” That was her account of the matter to Mr.
Browning; and he of course replied: “Oh, poor
Flush, do you think I do not love and respect him
for his jealous supervision — his slowness to know
another, having once known you?” It was easy
enough for Mr. Browning to be magnanimous, but
that easy magnanimity was perhaps the sharpest
thorn that pressed into Flush’s side.

Another incident a few days later showed how
widely they were separated, who had been so close,
how little Flush could now count on Miss Barrett
for sympathy. After Mr. Browning had gone one
afternoon Miss Barrett decided to drive to Regent’s
Park with her sister. As they got out at the Park

THE HOODED MAN

63

gate the door of the four-wheeler shut on Flush’s
paw. He “cried piteously” and held it up to Miss
Barrett for sympathy. In other days sympathy in
abundance would have been lavished upon him
for less. But now a detached, a mocking, a critical
expression came into her eyes. She laughed at him.
She thought he was shamming: “. . . no sooner
had he touched the grass than he began to run
without a thought of it”, she wrote. And she com-
mented sarcastically, “Flush always makes the most
of his misfortunes — he is of the Byronic school —
il se pose en victime^\ But here Miss Barrett, absorbed
in her own emotions, misjudged him completely.
If his paw had been broken, still he would have
bounded. That dash was his answer to her mockery;
I have done with you — that was the meaning he
flashed at her as he ran. The flowers smelt bitter
to him; the grass burnt his paws; the dust filled his
nostrils with disillusion. But he raced — hescampered.
“Dogs must be led on chains” — there was the usual
placard; there were the park-keepers with their
top-hats and their truncheons to enforce it. But
“must” no longer had any meaning for him. The
chain of love was broken. He would run where he
liked; chase partridges; chase spaniels; splash into
the middle of dahlia beds; break brilliant, blowing

64

FLUSH

red and yellow roses. Let the park-keepers throw
their truncheons if they chose. Let them dash his
brains out. Let him fall dead, disembowelled, at
Miss Barrett’s feet. He cared nothing. But naturally
nothing of the kind happened. Nobody pursued
him; nobody noticed him. The solitary park-
keeper was talking to a nursemaid. At last he
returned to Miss Barrett and she absent-mindedly
slipped the chain over his neck, and led him
home.

After two such humiliations the spirit of an
ordinary dog, the spirit even of an ordinary human
being, might well have been broken. But Flush,
for all his softness and silkiness, had eyes that
blazed; had passions that leapt not merely in bright
flame but sunk and smouldered. He resolved to
meet his enemy face to face and alone. No third
person should interrupt this final conflict. It should
be fought out by the principals themselves. On the
afternoon of Tuesday, the 21st of July, therefore,
he slipped downstairs and waited in the hall. He
had not long to wait. Soon he heard the tramp of
the familiar footstep in the street; he heard the
familiar rap on the door. Mr. Browning was
admitted. Vaguely aware of the impending attack
and determined to meet it in the most conciliatory

THE HOODED MAN

65

of spirits, Mr. Browning had come provided with
a parcel of cakes. There was Flush waiting in the
hall. Mr. Browning made, evidently, some well-
meant attempt to caress him; perhaps he even went
so far as to offer him a cake. The gesture was enough.
Flush sprang upon his enemy with unparalleled
violence. His teeth once more met in Mr. Browning’s
trousers. But unfortunately in the excitement of
the moment he forgot what was most essential —
silence. He barked; he flung himself on Mr. Brown-
ing, barking loudly. The sound was sufficient to
alarm the household. Wilson rushed downstairs.
Wilson beat him soundly. Wilson overpowered
him completely. Wilson led him in ignominy away.
Ignominy it was — to have attacked Mr. Browning,
to have been beaten by Wilson. Mr. Browning had
not lifted a finger. Taking his cakes with him, Mr.
Browning proceeded unhurt, unmoved, in perfect
composure, upstairs, alone to the bedroom. Flush
was led away.

After two and a half hours of miserable con-
finement with parrots and beetles, ferns and sauce-
pans, in the kitchen, Flush was summoned to Miss
Barrett’s presence. She was lying on the sofa with
her sister Arabella beside her. Conscious of the
rightness of his cause. Flush went straight to her.

E

66

FLUSH

But she refused to look at him. He turned to Ara-
bella. She merely said, ‘‘Naughty Flush, go away*’.
Wilson was there — the formidable, the implacable
Wilson. It was to her that Miss Barrett turned for
information. She had beaten him, Wilson said,
“because it was right”. And, she added, she had
only beaten him with her hand. It was upon her
evidence that Flush was convicted. The attack,
Miss Barrett assumed, had been unprovoked; she
credited Mr. Browning with all virtue, with all
generosity; Flush had been beaten off by a servant,
without a whip, because “it was right”. There was
no more to be said. Miss Barrett decided against
him. “So he lay down on the floor at my feet,” she
wrote, “looking from under his eyebrows at me.”
But though Flush might look, Miss Barrett refused
even to meet his eyes. There she lay on the sofa;
there Flush lay on the floor.

And as he lay there, exiled, on the carpet, he
went through one of those whirlpools of tumultuous
emotion in which the soul is either dashed upon
the rocks and splintered or, finding some tuft of
foothold, slowly and painfully pulls itself up, re-
gains dry land, and at last emerges on top of a
ruined universe to survey a world created afresh
on a different plan. Which was it to be — destruc-

THE HOODED MAN

67

tion or reconstruction? That was the question. The
outlines only of his dilemma can be traced here;
for his debate was silent. Twice Flush had done his
utmost to kill his enemy; twice he had failed. And
why had he failed, he asked himself? Because he
loved Miss Barrett. Looking up at her from under
his eyebrows as she lay, severe and silent on the
sofa, he knew that he must love her for ever. Things
are not simple but complex. If he bit Mr. Browning
he bit her too. Hatred is not hatred; hatred is also
love. Here Flush shook his ears in an agony of
perplexity. He turned uneasily on the floor. Mr.
Browning was Miss Barrett — Miss Barrett was Mr.
Browning; love is hatred and hatred is love. He
stretched himself, whined and raised his head from
the floor. The clock struck eight. For three hours
and more he had been lying there, tossed from the
horn of one dilemma to another.

Even Miss Barrett, severe, cold, implacable as
she was, laid down her pen. “Wicked Flush!’’ she
had been writing to Mr. Browning, “. . .if people
like Flush, choose to behave like dogs savagely,
they must take the consequences indeed, as dogs
usually do! And so good and gentle to him! Any-
one hut you would have said ‘hasty words’ at least,”
Really it would be a good plan, she thought, to

68

FLUSH

buy a muzzle. And then she looked up and saw
Flush. Something unusual in his look must have
struck her. She paused. She laid down her pen.
Once he had roused her with a kiss, and she had
thought that he was Pan. He had eaten chicken
and rice pudding soaked in cream. He had given
up the sunshine for her sake. She called him to her
and said she forgave him.

But to be forgiven, as if for a passing whim, to
be taken back again on to the sofa as if he had
learnt nothing in his anguish on the floor, as if he
were the same dog when in fact he differed totally,
was impossible. For the moment, exhausted as he
was. Flush submitted. A few days later, however,
a remarkable scene took place between him and
Miss Barrett which showed the depths of his
emotions. Mr. Browning had been and gone;
Flush was alone with Miss Barrett. Normally he
would have leapt on to the sofa at her feet. But
now, instead of jumping up as usual and claiming
her caress. Flush went to what was now called
“Mr. Browning’s armchair”. Usually the chair
was abhorrent to him; it still held the shape of his
enemy. But now, such was the battle he had won,
such was the charity that suffused him, that he not
only looked at the chair but, as he looked, “sud-

THE HOODED MAN

69

denly fell into a rapture”. Miss Barrett, watching
him intently, observed this extraordinary portent.
Next she saw him turn his eyes towards a table. On
that table still lay the packet of Mr. Browning’s
cakes. He ‘‘reminded me that the cakes you left
were on the table”. They were now old cakes, stale
cakes, cakes bereft of any carnal seduction. Flush’s
meaning was plain. He had refused to eat the cakes
when they were fresh, because they were offered
by an enemy. He would eat them now that they
were stale, because they were offered by an enemy
turned to friend, because they were symbols of
hatred turned to love. Yes, he signified, he would
eat them now. So Miss Barrett rose and took the
cakes in her hand. And as she gave them to him
she admonished him, “So I explained to him that
you had brought them for him, and that he ought
to be properly ashamed therefore for his past
wickedness, and make up his mind to love you and
not bite you for the future — and he was allowed to
profit from your goodness to him”. As he swallowed
down the faded flakes of that distasteful pastry —
it was mouldy, it was fly-blown, it was sour —
Flush solemnly repeated, in his own language,
the words she had used — he swore to love Mr.
Browning and not bite him for the future.

70

FLUSH

He was instantly rewarded — not by stale cakes,
not by chicken’s wings, not by the caresses that
were now his, nor by the permission to lie once
more on the sofa at Miss Barrett’s feet. He was
rewarded, spiritually; yet the effects were curiously
physical. Like an iron bar corroding and festering
and killing all natural life beneath it, hatred had
lain all these months across his soul. Now, by the
cutting of sharp knives and painful surgery, the
iron had been excised. Now the blood ran once
more; the nerves shot and tingled; flesh formed;
Nature rejoiced, as in spring. Flush heard the birds
sing again; he felt the leaves growing on the trees;
as he lay on the sofa at Miss Barrett’s feet, glory and
delight coursed through his veins. He was with
them, not against them, now; their hopes, their
wishes, their desires were his. Flush could have
barked in sympathy with Mr. Browning now. The
short, sharp words raised the hackles on his neck.
‘T need a week of Tuesdays,” Mr. Browning cried,
‘‘then a month — a year — a lifel” I, Flush echoed
him, need a month — a year — a life! I need all the
things that you both need. We are all three con-
spirators in the most glorious of causes. We are
joined in sympathy. We are joined in hatred. We
are joined in defiance of black and beetling tyranny.

THE HOODED MAN

71

We are joined in love. — In short, all Flush’s hopes
now were set upon some dimly apprehended but
none the less certainly emerging triumph, upon
some glorious victory that was to be theirs in
common, when suddenly, without a word of warn-
ing, in the midst of civilisation, security and friend-
ship — he was in a shop in Vere Street with Miss
Barrett and her sister: it was the morning of Tues-
day the 1 2th of September — Flush was tumbled
head over heels into darkness. The doors of a dun-
geon shut upon him. He was stolen.

CHAPTER IV

WHITECHAPEL

“This morning Arabel and I, and he with us/’
Miss Barrett wrote, “went in a cab to Vere Street
where we had a little business, and he followed
us as usual into a shop and out of it again, and
was at my heels when I stepped up into the carriage.
Having turned, I said ‘Flush’, and Arabel looked
round for Flush — there was no Flush! He had been
caught up in that moment, from under the wheels,
do you understand?” Mr. Browning understood
perfectly well. Miss Barrett had forgotten the chain;
therefore Flush was stolen. Such, in the year 1846,
was the law of Wimpole Street and its neighbour-
hood.

Nothing, it is true, could exceed the apparent
solidity and security of Wimpole Street itself. As
far as an invalid could walk or a bath-chair could
trundle nothing met the eye but an agreeable pro-
spect of four-storeyed houses, plate-glass windows
and mahogany doors. Even a carriage and pair,
72

WHITECHAPEL

73

in the course of an afternoon’s airing, need not,
if the coachman were discreet, leave the limits of
decorum and respectability. But if you were not
an invalid, if you did not possess a carriage and
pair, if you were — and many people were — active
and able-bodied and fond of walking, then you
might see sights and hear language and smell
smells, not a stone’s-throw from Wimpole Street,
that threw doubts upon the solidity even of Wim-
pole Street itself. So Mr. Thomas Beames found
when about this time he took it into his head to go
walking about London. He was surprised; indeed
he was shocked. Splendid buildings raised them-
selves in Westminster, yet just behind them were
ruined sheds in which human beings lived herded
together above herds of cows — '^two in each seven
feet of space”. He felt that he ought to tell people
what he had seen. Yet how could one describe
politely a bedroom in which two or three families
lived above a cow-shed, when the cow-shed had no
ventilation, when the cows were milked and killed
and eaten under the bedroom? That was a task,
as Mr. Beames found when he came to attempt it,
that taxed all the resources of the English language.
And yet he felt that he ought to describe what he
had seen in the course of an afternoon’s walk

74

FLUSH

through some of the most aristocratic parishes in
London. The risk of typhus was so great. The rich
could not know what dangers they were running.
He could not altogether hold his tongue when he
found what he did find in Westminster and
Paddington and Marylebone. For instance, here
was an old mansion formerly belonging to some
great nobleman. Relics of marble mantelpieces
remained. The rooms were panelled and the
banisters were carved, and yet the floors were
rotten, the walls dripped with filth; hordes of half-
naked men and women had taken up their lodging
in the old banqueting-halls. Then he walked on.
Here an enterprising builder had pulled down the
old family mansion. He had run up a jerry-built
tenement house in its place. The rain dripped
through the roof and the wind blew through the
walls. He saw a child dipping a can into a bright-
green stream and asked if they drank that water.
Yes, and washed in it too, for the landlord only
allowed water to be turned on twice a week. Such
sights were the more surprising, because one might
come upon them in the most sedate and civilised
quarters of London — ‘The most aristocratic parishes
have their share”. Behind Miss Barrett’s bedroom,
for instance, was one of the worst slums in London.

WHITECHAPEL

75

Mixed up with that respectability was this squalor.
But there were certain quarters, of course, which
had long been given over to the poor and were left
undisturbed. In Whitechapel, or in a triangular
space of ground at the bottom of the Tottenham
Court Road, poverty and vice and misery had bred
and seethed and propagated their kind for centuries
without interference. A dense mass of aged build-
ings in St. Giles’s was “wellnigh a penal settlement,
a pauper metropolis in itself”. Aptly enough, where
the poor conglomerated thus, the settlement was
called a Rookery. For there human beings swarmed
on top of each other as rooks swarm and blacken
tree-tops. Only the buildings here were not trees;
they were hardly any longer buildings. They were
cells of brick intersected by lanes which ran with
filth. All day the lanes buzzed with half-dressed
human beings; at night there poured back again
into the stream the thieves, beggars and prostitutes
who had been plying their trade all day in the West
End. The police could do nothing. No single way-
farer could do anything except hurry through as
fast as he could and perhaps drop a hint, as Mr.
Beames did, with many quotations, evasions and
euphemisms, that all was not quite as it should
be. Cholera would come, and perhaps the hint

76

FLUSH

that cholera would give would not be quite so
evasive.

But in the summer of 1846 that hint had not yet
been given; and the only safe course for those who
lived in Wimpole Street and its neighbourhood was
to keep strictly within the respectable area and to
lead your dog on a chain. If one forgot, as Miss
Barrett forgot, one paid the penalty, as Miss Barrett
was now to pay it. The terms upon which Wimpole
Street lived cheek by jowl with St. Giles’s were
well known. St. Giles’s stole what St. Giles’s could;
Wimpole Street paid what Wimpole Street must.
Thus Arabel at once “began to comfort me by
showing how certain it was that I should recover
him for ten pounds at most”. Ten pounds, it was
reckoned, was about the price that Mr. Taylor
would ask for a cocker spaniel. Mr. Taylor was the
head of the gang. As soon as a lady in Wimpole
Street lost her dog she went to Mr. Taylor; he
named his price, and it was paid; or if not, a
brown paper parcel was delivered in Wimpole
Street a few days later containing the head and
paws of the dog. Such, at least, had been the ex-
perience of a lady in the neighbourhood who had
tried to make terms with Mr. Taylor. But Miss
Barrett of course intended to pay. Therefore when

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77

she got home she told her brother Henry, and
Henry went to see Mr. Taylor that afternoon. He
found him ‘‘smoking a cigar in a room with pic-
tures” — Mr. Taylor was said to make an income
of two or three thousand a year out of the dogs
of Wimpole Street — and Mr. Taylor promised that
he would confer with his “Society” and that the
dog would be returned next day. Vexatious as it
was, and especially annoying at a moment when
Miss Barrett needed all her money, such were the
inevitable consequences of forgetting in 1846 to
keep one’s dog on a chain.

But for Flush things were very different. Flush,
Miss Barrett reflected, “doesn’t know that we can
recover him”; Flush had never mastered the prin-
ciples of human society. “All this night he will howl
and lament, I know perfectly”, Miss Barrett wrote
to Mr. Browning on the afternoon of Tuesday, the
2nd September. But while Miss Barrett wrote to
Mr. Browning, Flush was going through the most
terrible experience of his life. He was bewildered
in the extreme. One moment he was in Vere
Street, among ribbons and laces; the next he
was tumbled head over heels into a bag; jolted
rapidly across streets, and at length was tumbled
out — ^here. He found himself in complete darkness.

78

FLUSH

He found himself in chillness and dampness. As
his giddiness left him he made out a few shapes
in a low dark room — broken chairs, a tumbled
mattress. Then he was seized and tied tightly
by the leg to some obstacle. Something sprawled
on the floor — ^whether beast or human being, he
could not tell. Great boots and draggled skirts kept
stumbling in and out. Flies buzzed on scraps of
old meat that were decaying on the floor. Children
crawled out from dark corners and pinched his
ears. He whined, and a heavy hand beat him over
the head. He cowered down on the few inches of
damp brick against the wall. Now he could see
that the floor was crowded with animals of differ-
ent kinds. Dogs tore and worried a festering bone
that they had got between them. Their ribs stood
out from their coats — they were half famished,
dirty, diseased, uncombed, unbrushed; yet all of
them, Flush could see, were dogs of the highest
breeding, chained dogs, footmen’s dogs, like him-
self.

He lay, not daring even to whimper, hour after
hour. Thirst was his worst suffering; but one sip
of the thick greenish water that stood in a pail near
him disgusted him; he would rather die than drink
another. Yet a majestic greyhound was drinking

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79

greedily. Whenever the door was kicked open he
looked up. Miss Barrett — ^was it Miss Barrett? Had
she come at last? But it was only a hairy ruffian,
who kicked them ail aside and stumbled to a broken
chair upon which he flung himself. Then gradually
the darkness thickened. He could scarcely make
out what shapes those were, on the floor, on the
mattress, on the broken chairs. A stump of candle
was stuck on the ledge over the fireplace. A flare
burnt in the gutter outside. By^ts flickering, coarse
light Flush could see terrible faces passing outside,
leering at the window. Then in they came, until
the small crowded room became so crowded that
he had to shrink back and lie even closer against
the wall. These horrible monsters — some were
ragged, others were flaring with paint and feathers
— squatted on the floor; hunched themselves over
the table. They began to drink; they cursed and
struck each other. Out tumbled, from the bags
that were dropped on the floor, more dogs — lap-
dogs, setters, pointers, with their collars still on
them; and a giant cockatoo that flustered and
fluttered its way from corner to corner, shrieking
‘‘Pretty Poll’’, “Pretty Poll”, with an accent that
would have terrified its mistress, a widow in Maida
Vale. Then the women’s bags were opened, and

8o

FLUSH

out were tossed on to the table bracelets and
rings and brooches such as Flush had seen Miss
Barrett wear and Miss Henrietta. The demons
pawed and clawed them; cursed and quarrelled
over them. The dogs barked. The children shrieked,
and the splendid cockatoo — such a bird as Flush
had often seen pendant in a Wimpole Street
window — shrieked “Pretty Poll! Pretty Poll!’’
faster and faster until a slipper was thrown at it
and it flapped its great yellow-stained dove-grey
wings in frenzy. Then the candle toppled over and
fell. The room was dark. It grew steadily hotter
and hotter; the smell, the heat, were unbearable,
Flush’s nose burnt; his coat twitched. And still
Miss Barrett did not come.

Miss Barrett lay on her sofa in Wimpole Street.
She was vexed; she was worried, but she was not
seriously alarmed. Of course Flush would suffer;
he would whine and bark all night; but it was only
a question of a few hours. Mr. Taylor would name
his sum; she would pay it; Flush would be re-
turned.

The morning of Wednesday the 3rd September
dawned in the rookeries of Whitechapel. The
broken windows gradually became smeared with
grey. Light fell upon the hairy faces of ruffians lying

rod need by permission of the A'atumai Portrait i,

MRS. BROWNING

WHITECHAPEL

8l

sprawled upon the floor. Flush woke from a trance
that had veiled his eyes and once more realised the
truth. This was now the truth — this room, these
ruffians, these whining, snapping, tightly tethered
dogs, this murk, this dampness. Could it be true
that he had been in a shop, with ladies, among
ribbons, only yesterday? Was there such a place
as Wimpole Street? Was there a room where fresh
water sparkled in a purple jar; had he lain on
cushions; had he been given a chicken’s wing
nicely roasted; and had he been torn with rage and
jealousy and bitten a man with yellow gloves? The
whole of that life and its emotions floated away,
dissolved, became unreal.

Here, as the dusty light filtered in, a woman
heaved herself off a sack and staggered out to fetch
beer. The drinking and the cursing began again.
A fat woman held him up by his ears and pinched
his ribs, and some odious joke was made about
him — there was a roar of laughter as she threw
him on the floor again. The door was kicked open
and banged to. Whenever that happened he
looked up. Was it Wilson? Could it possibly be Mr.
Browning? Or Miss Barrett? But no — it was only
another thief, another murderer; he cowered back
at the mere sight of those draggled skirts, of those

F

82

FLUSH

hard, horny boots. Once he tried to gnaw a bone
that was hurled his way. But his teeth could not
meet in stony flesh and the rank smell disgusted
him. His thirst increased and he was forced to
lap a little of the green water that had been spilt
from the pail. But as Wednesday wore on and he
became hotter and more parched and still more
sore, lying on the broken boards, one thing merged
in another. He scarcely noticed what was happen-
ing. It was only when the door opened that he raised
his head and looked. No, it was not Miss Barrett.

Miss Barrett, lying on the sofa in Wimpole Street,
was becoming anxious. There was some hitch in
the proceedings. Taylor had promised that he would
go down to Whitechapel on Wednesday afternoon
and confer with ^‘the Society’ \ Yet Wednesday
afternoon, Wednesday evening passed and still
Taylor did not come. This could only mean, she
supposed, that the price was going to be raised
— ^which was inconvenient enough at the moment.
Still, of course, she would have to pay it. ‘T must
have my Flush, you know”, she wrote to Mr.
Browning. 'T can’t run any risk and bargain and
haggle.” So she lay on the sofa writing to Mr.
Browning and listening for a knock at the door.
But Wilson came up with the letters; Wilson came

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83

up with the hot water. It was time for bed and Flush
had not come.

Thursday the 4th of September dawned in
Whitechapel. The door opened and shut. The red
setter who had been whining all night beside Flush
on the floor was hauled off by a ruffian in a mole-
skin vest — to what fate? Was it better to be killed
or to stay here? Which was worse — this life or that
death? The racket, the hunger and the thirst, the
reeking smells of the place — and once, Flush re-
membered, he had detested the scent of eau-de-
Cologne — ^were fast obliterating any clear image,
any single desire. Fragments of old memories began
turning in his head. Was that the voice of old Dr.
Mitford shouting in the field? Was that Keren-
happoch gossiping with the baker at the door?
There was a rattling in the room and he thought
he heard Miss Matford tying up a bunch of
geraniums. But it was only the wind — ^for it was
stormy to-day — battering at the brown paper in
the broken window pane. It was only some drunken
voice raving in the gutter. It was only the old hag
in the corner mumbling on and on and on as she
fried a herring in a pan over a fire. He had been
forgotten and deserted. No help was coming. No
voice spoke to him — the parrots cried ‘Tretty Poll,

84

FLUSH

Pretty Poll”, and the canaries kept up their sense-
less cheeping and chirping.

Then again evening darkened the room; the
candle was stuck in its saucer; the coarse light
flared outside; hordes of sinister men with bags on
their backs, of garish women with painted faces,
began to shuffle in at the door and to fling them-
selves down on the broken beds and tables. Another
night had folded its blackness over Whitechapel.
And the rain dripped steadily through a hole in
the roof and drummed into a pail that had been
stood to catch it. Miss Barrett had not come.

Thursday dawned in Wimpole Street. There
was no sign of Flush — no message from Taylor.
Miss Barrett was very much alarmed. She made
enquiries. She summoned her brother Henry, and
cross-examined him. She found out that he had
tricked her, “The archfiend” Taylor had come
according to his promise the night before. He had
stated his terms — six guineas for the Society and
half a guinea for himself. But Henry, instead of
telling her, had told Mr. Barrett, with the result,
of course, that Mr. Barrett had ordered him not
to pay, and to conceal the visit from his sister.
Miss Barrett was “very vexed and angry”. She
bade her brother to go at once to Mr. Taylor and

WHITECHAPEL

^5

pay the money. Henry refused and ^'talked of
Papa”. But it was no use talking of Papa, she
protested. While they talked of Papa, Flush would
be killed. She made up her mind. If Henry would
not go, she would go herself: “. . . if people won’t
do as I choose, I shall go down to-morrow morn-
ing, and bring Flush back with me”, she wrote to
Mr. Browning.

But Miss Barrett now found that it was easier
to say this than to do it. It was almost as difficult for
her to go to Flush as for Flush to come to her. All
Wimpole Street was against her. The news that
Flush was stolen and that Taylor demanded a
ransom was now public property. Wimpole Street
was determined to make a stand against White-
chapel. Blind Mr. Boyd sent word that in his opinion
it would be ‘‘an awful sin” to pay the ransom. Her
father and her brother were in league against her
and were capable of any treachery in the interests
of their class. But worst of all — far worse — Mr,
Browning himself threw all his weight, all his
eloquence, all his learning, all his logic, on the side
of Wimpole Street and against Flush. If Miss
Barrett gave way to Taylor, he wrote, she was
giving way to tyranny; she was giving way to
blackmailers; she was increasing the power of evil

86

FLUSH

over right, of wickedness over innocence. If she
gave Taylor his demand, . how will the poor
owners fare who have not money enough for
their dogs’ redemption”? His imagination took
fire; he imagined what he would say if Taylor
asked him even for five shillings; he would say,
^^Tou are responsible for the proceedings of your
gang, 2Sidyou I mark — don’t talk nonsense to me
about cutting off heads or paws. Be as sure as that
I stand here and tell you, I will spend my whole
life in putting you down, the nuisance you declare
yourself— and by every imaginable means I will
be the death of you and as many of your accom-
plices as I can discover — hut you I have discovered
and will never lose sight of. ...” So Mr. Browning
would have replied to Taylor if he had had the good
fortune to meet that gentleman. For indeed, he
went on, catching a later post with a second letter
that same Thursday afternoon, . . it is horrible
to fancy how all the oppressors in their several
ranks may, if they choose, twitch back to them by
the heartstrings after various modes the weak and
silent whose secret they have found out”. He did
not blame Miss Barrett — nothing she did could be
anything but perfectly right, perfectly acceptable
to him. Still, he continued on Friday morning, ‘T

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87

think it lamentable weakness. . If she encouraged
Taylor who stole dogs, she encouraged Mr. Barnard
Gregory who stole characters. Indirectly, she was
responsible for all the wretches who cut their
throats or fly the country because some black-
mailer like Barnard Gregory took down a directory
and blasted their characters. ‘‘But why write all this
string of truisms about the plainest thing in the
world?” So Mr. Browning stormed and vociferated
from New Gross twice daily.

Lying on her sofa. Miss Barrett read the letters.
How easy it would have been to yield — how easy
it would have been to say, “Your good opinion is
worth more to me than a hundred cocker spaniels”.
How easy it would have been to sink back on her
pillows and sigh, “I am a weak woman; I know
nothing of law and justice; decide for me”. She had
only to refuse to pay the ransom; she had only to
defy Taylor and his Society. And if Flush were
killed, if the dreadful parcel came and she opened
it and out dropped his head and paws, there was
Robert Browning by her side to assure her that she
had done right and earned his respect. But Miss
Barrett was not to be intimidated. Miss Barrett took
up her pen and refuted Robert Browning. It was
all very well, she said, to quote Donne; to cite

88

FLUSH

the case of Gregory; to invent spirited replies to
Mr. Taylor — she would have done the same had
Taylor struck her; had Gregory defamed her; —
would that they had! But what would Mr. Brown-
ing have done if the banditti had stolen her; had
her in their power; threatened to cut off her ears
and send them by post to New Cross? Whatever he
would have done, her mind was made up. Flush
was helpless. Her duty was to him. “But Flush,
poor Flush, who has loved me so faithfully; have
I a right to sacrifice him in his innocence, for the
sake of any Mr. Taylor’s guilt in the world?” What-
ever Mr. Browning might say, she was going to
rescue Flush, even if she went down into the
jaws of Whitechapel to fetch him, even if Robert
Browning despised her for doing so.

On Saturday, therefore, with Mr. Browning’s
letter lying open on the table before her, she began
to dress. She read his “one word more — in all this,
I labour against the execrable policy of the world’s
husbands, fathers, brothers and domineerers in
general”. So, if she went to Whitechapel she was
siding against Robert Browning, and in favour of
fathers, brothers and domineerers in general. Still,
she went on dressing. A dog howled in the mews.
It was tied up, helpless in the power of cruel men.

WHITECHAPEL

It seemed to her to cry as it howled: ‘‘Think of
Flush”. She put on her shoes, her cloak, her hat.
She glanced at Mr. Browning’s letter once more.
“I am about to marry you”, she read. Still the
dog howled. She left her room and went down-
stairs.

Henry Barrett met her and told her that in his
opinion she might well be robbed and murdered
if she did what she threatened. She told Wilson to
call a cab. All trembling but submissive, Wilson
obeyed. The cab came. Miss Barrett told Wilson
to get in. Wilson, though convinced that death
awaited her, got in. Miss Barrett told the cab-
man to drive to Manning Street, Shoreditch. Miss
Barrett got in herself and off they drove. Soon they
were beyond plate-glass windows, the mahogany
doors and the area railings. They were in a world
that Miss Barrett had never seen, had never
guessed at. They were in a world where cows are
herded under bedroom floors, where whole families
sleep in rooms with broken windows; in a world
where water is turned on only twice a week, in a
world where vice and poverty breed vice and
poverty. They had come to a region unknown to
respectable cab-drivers. The cab stopped; the
driver asked his way at a public-house. “Out came

90

FLUSH

two or three men, ‘Oh, you want to find Mr.
Taylor, I daresay!’ ” In this mysterious world a cab
with two ladies could only come upon one errand,
and that errand was already known. It was sinister
in the extreme. One of the men ran into a house,
and came out saying that Mr. Taylor “ ‘wasn’t at
home! but wouldn’t I get out?’ Wilson, in an
aside of terror, entreated me not to think of such
a thing.” A gang of men and boys pressed round
the cab. “Then wouldn’t I see Mrs. Taylor?” the
man asked. Miss Barrett had no wish whatever to see
Mrs. Taylor; but now an immense fat woman came
out of the house, “fat enough to have had an easy
conscience all her life”, and informed Miss Barrett
that her husband was out: “might be in in a few
minutes, or in so many hours — ^wouldn’t I like to
get out and wait?” Wilson tugged at her gown.
Imagine waiting in the house of that woman! It was
bad enough to sit in the cab with the gang of men
and boys pressing round them. So Miss Barrett par-
leyed with the “immense feminine bandit” from the
cab. Mr. Taylor had her dog, she said; Mr. Taylor
had promised to restore her dog; would Mr. Taylor
bring back her dog to Wimpole Street for certain
that very day? “Oh yes, certainly,” said the fat
woman with the most gracious of smiles. She did

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91

believe that Taylor had left home precisely on that
business. And she ^‘poised her head to right and
left with the most easy grace”.

So the cab turned round and left Manning
Street, Shoreditch. Wilson was of opinion that ‘Ve
had escaped with our lives barely”. Miss Barrett
herself had been alarmed. ‘Tlain enough it was
that the gang was strong there. The Society, the
Taney’ . . . had their roots in the ground”, she
wrote. Her mind teemed with thoughts, her eyes
were full of pictures. This, then, was what lay on
the other side of Wimpole Street — these faces,
these houses. She had seen more while she sat in
the cab at the public-house than she had seen
during the five years that she had lain in the back
bedroom at Wimpole Street. "‘The faces of those
men!” she exclaimed. They were branded on her
eyeballs. They stimulated her imagination as “the
divine marble presences”, the busts on the book-
case, had never stimulated it. Here lived women
like herself; while she lay on her sofa, reading,
writing, they lived thus. But the cab was now
trundling along between four-storeyed houses again.
Here was the familiar avenue of doors and win-
dows: the pointed brick, the brass knockers, the
regular curtains. Here was Wimpole Street and

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FLUSH

No. 50. Wilson sprang out — with what relief to
find herself in safety can be imagined. But Miss
Barrett perhaps hesitated a moment. She still saw
‘‘the faces of those men”. They were to come
before her again years later when she sat writing
on a sunny balcony in Italy. They were to inspire
the most vivid passages in Aurora Leigh. But now the
butler had opened the door, and she went upstairs
to her room again.

Saturday was the fifth day of Flush’s imprison-
ment. Almost exhausted, almost hopeless, he lay
panting in his dark corner of the teeming floor.
Doors slammed and banged. Rough voices cried.
Women screamed. Parrots chattered as they had
never chattered to widows in Maida Vale, but now
evil old women merely cursed at them. Insects
crawled in his fur, but he was too weak, too in-
different to shake his coat. All Flush’s past hfe and
its many scenes — Reading, the greenhouse. Miss
Mitford, Mr. Kenyon, the bookcases, the busts, the
peasants on the blind — ^had faded like snowflakes
dissolved in a cauldron. If he still held to hope,
it was to something nameless and formless; the
featureless face of someone he still called “Miss
Barrett”. She still existed; all the rest of the world
was gone; but she still existed, though such gulfs

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93

lay between them that it was impossible, almost,
that she should reach him still. Darkness began to
fall again, such darkness as seemed almost able to
crush out his last hope — Miss Barrett.

In truth, the forces of Wimpole Street were still,
even at this last moment, battling to keep Flush
and Miss Barrett apart. On Saturday afternoon she
lay and waited for Taylor to come, as the immensely
fat woman had promised. At last he came, but he
had not brought the dog. He sent up a message —
Let Miss Barrett pay him six guineas on the spot,
and he would go straight to Whitechapel and fetch
the dog “on his word of honour”. What “the arch-
fiend” Taylor’s word of honour might be worth.
Miss Barrett could not say; but “there seemed no
other way for it”; Flush’s life was at stake; she
counted out the guineas and sent them down to
Taylor in the passage. But as ill luck would have
it, as Taylor waited in the passage among the um-
brellas, the engravings, the pile carpet and other
valuable objects, Alfred Barrett came in. The sight
of the archfiend actually in the house made him
lose his temper. He burst into a rage. He called
him “a swindler, and a liar and a thief”. There-
upon Mr. Taylor cursed him back. What was far
worse, he swore that “as he hoped to be saved, we

94

FLUSH

should never see our dog again”, and rushed out
of the house. Next morning, then, the blood-
stained parcel would arrive.

Miss Barrett flung on her clothes again and
rushed downstairs. Where was Wilson? Let her call
a cab. She was going back to Shoreditch instantly.
Her family came running to prevent her. It was
getting dark. She was exhausted already. The
adventure was risky enough for a man in health.
For her it was madness. So they told her. Her
brothers, her sisters, all came round her threatening
her, dissuading her, ‘‘crying out against me for
being ‘quite mad’ and obstinate and wilful — I was
called as many names as Mr. Taylor”. But she
stood her ground. At last they realised the extent
of her folly. Whatever the risk might be they must
give way to her. Septimus promised if Ba would
return to her room “and be in good humour” he
would go to Taylor’s himself and pay the money
and bring back the dog.

So the dusk of the 5th of September faded into
the blackness of night in Whitechapel. The door
of the room was once more kicked open. A hairy
man hauled Flush by the scruff of his neck out of
his corner. Looking up into the hideous face of his
old enemy, Flush did not know whether he was

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95

being taken to be killed or to be freed. Save for one
phantom memory, he did not care. The man
stooped. What were those great fingers fumbling
at his throat for? Was it a knife or a chain? Stumb-
ling, half blinded, on legs that staggered, Flush was
led out into the open air.

In Wimpole Street Miss Barrett could not eat
her dinner. Was Flush dead, or was Flush alive? She
did not know. At eight o’clock there was a rap on
the door; it was the usual letter from Mr. Browning.
But as the door opened to admit the letter, some-
thing rushed in also; — Flush. He made straight for
his purple jar. It was filled three times over; and
still he drank. Miss Barrett watched the dazed,
bewildered dirty dog, drinking. ‘'He was not so
enthusiastic about seeing me as I expected”, she
remarked. No, there was only one thing in the
world he wanted — clean water.

After all. Miss Barrett had but glanced at the
faces of those men and she remembered them all
her life. Flush had been at their mercy in their
midst for five whole days. Now as he lay on cushions
once more, cold water was the only thing that
seemed to have any substance, any reality. He
drank continually. The old gods of the bedroom —
the bookcase, the wardrobe, the busts — seemed to

96

FLUSH

have lost their substance. This room was no longer
the whole world; it was only a shelter. It was only
a dell arched over by one trembling dock-leaf in
a forest where wild beasts prowled and venomous
snakes coiled; where behind every tree lurked a
murderer ready to pounce. As he lay dazed and
exhausted on the sofa at Miss Barrett’s feet the
howls of tethered dogs, the screams of birds in
terror still sounded in his ears. When the door
opened he started, expecting a hairy man with a
knife — it was only Mr. Kenyon with a book; it was
only Mr. Browning with his yellow gloves. But he
shrank away from Mr. Kenyon and Mr. Browning
now. He trusted them no longer. Behind those
smiling, friendly faces was treachery and cruelty
and deceit. Their caresses were hollow. He dreaded
even walking with Wilson to the pillar-box. He
would not stir without his chain. When they said,
“Poor Flush, did the naughty men take you away?”
he put up his head and moaned and yelled. A whip
cracking sent him bolting down the area-steps into
safety. Indoors he crept closer to Miss Barrett on
the sofa. She alone had not deserted him. He still
kept some faith in her. Gradually some substance
returned to her. Exhausted, trembling, dirty and
very thin, he lay on the sofa at her feet.

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97

As the days passed and the memory of White-
chapel grew fainter, Flush, lying close to Miss
Barrett on the sofa, read her feelings more clearly
than ever before. They had been parted; now they
were together. Indeed they had never been so much
akin. Every start she gave, every movement she
made, passed through him too. And she seemed
now to be perpetually starting and moving. The
delivery of a parcel even made her jump. She
opened the parcel; with trembling fingers she took
out a pair of thick boots. She hid them instantly in
the corner of the cupboard. Then she lay down as
if nothing had happened; yet something had hap-
pened. When they were alone she rose and took
a diamond necklace from a drawer. She took out the
box that held Mr. Browning’s letters. She laid the
boots, the necklace and the letters all in a carpet-
box together and then — as if she heard a step on the
stair — she pushed the box under the bed and lay
down hastily, covering herself with her shawl again.
Such signs of secrecy and stealth must herald, Flush
felt, some approaching crisis. Were they about to fly
together? Were they about to escape together from
this awful world of dog-stealers and tyrants? Oh
that it were possible! He trembled and whined with
excitement; but in her low voice Miss Barrett bade

G

98

FLUSH

him be quiet, and instantly he was quiet. She was
very quiet too. She lay perfectly still on the sofa
directly any of her brothers or sisters came in; she
lay and talked to Mr. Barrett as she always lay and
talked to Mr. Barrett.

But on Saturday, the 12th of September, Miss
Barrett did what Flush had never known her do
before. She dressed herself as if to go out directly
after breakfast. Moreover, as he watched her dress,
Flush knew perfectly well from the expression on
her face that he was not to go with her. She was
bound on secret business of her own. At ten Wilson
came into the room. She also was dressed as if for
a walk. They went out together; and Flush lay on
the sofa and waited for their return. An hour or so
later Miss Barrett came back alone. She did not look
at him — she seemed to look at nothing. She drew
off her gloves and for a moment he saw a gold band
shine on one of the fingers of her left hand. Then
he saw her slip the ring from her hand and hide it
in the darkness of a drawer. Then she laid her-
self down as usual on the sofa. He lay by her
side scarcely daring to breathe, for whatever had
happened, it was something that must at all costs
be concealed.

At all costs the life of the bedroom must go on

WHITECHAPEL

99

as usual. Yet everything was diflferent. The very
movement of the blind as it drew in and out seemed
to Flush like a signal. And as the lights and shadows
passed over the busts they too seemed to be hinting
and beckoning. Everything in the room seemed to
be aware of change; to be prepared for some event.
And yet all was silent; all was concealed. The
brothers and sisters came in and out as usual; Mr.
Barrett came as usual in the evening. He looked
as usual to see that the chop was finished, the
wine drunk. Miss Barrett talked and laughed and
gave no sign when anyone was in the room that
she was hiding anything. Yet when they were
alone she pulled out the box from under the bed
and filled it hastily, stealthily, listening as she did
so. And the signs of strain were unmistakable. On
Sunday the church bells were ringing. ‘‘What bells
are those?” somebody asked. “Marylebone Church
bells”, said Miss Henrietta. Miss Barrett, Flush
saw, went deadly white. But nobody else seemed
to notice anything.

So Monday passed, and Tuesday and Wednesday
and Thursday. Over them all lay a blanket of
silence, of eating and talking and lying still on the
sofa as usual. Flush, tossing in uneasy sleep, dreamt
that they were couched together under ferns and

100

FLUSH

leaves in the darkness, in a vast forest; then the
leaves were parted and he woke. It was dark; but
he saw Wilson come stealthily into the room, and
take the box from beneath the bed and quietly
carry it outside. This was on Friday night, the
igth of September. All Saturday morning he lay
as one lies who knows that at any moment now a
handkerchief may drop, a low whistle may sound
and the signal will be given for death or for life. He
watched Miss Barrett dress herself. At a quarter
to four the door opened and Wilson came in. Then
the signal was given — Miss Barrett lifted him in her
arms. She rose and walked to the door. For a
moment they stood looking round the room. There
was the sofa and by it Mr. Browning’s armchair.
There were the busts and the tables. The sun filtered
through the ivy leaves and the blind with peasants
walking blew gently out. All was as usual. All seemed
to expect a million more such movements to come
to them; but to Miss Barrett and Flush this was
the last. Very quietly Miss Barrett shut the door.

Very quietly they slipped downstairs, past the
drawing-room, the library, the dining-room. All
looked as they usually looked; smelt as they usually
smelt; all were quiet as if sleeping in the hot Sep-
tember afternoon. On the mat in the hall Catiline

WHITECHAPEL

lOI

lay sleeping too. They gained the front door and
very quietly turned the handle. A cab was waiting
outside.

*‘To Hodgson’s”, said Miss Barrett. She spoke
almost in a whisper. Flush sat on her knee very
still. Not for anything in the whole world would
he have broken that tremendous silence.

CHAPTER V

ITALY

Hours, days, weeks, it seemed of darkness and
rattling; of sudden lights; and then long tunnels of
gloom; of being flung this way and that; of being
hastily lifted into the light and seeing Miss Barrett’s
face close, and thin trees and lines and rails and
high light-specked houses — ^for it was the barbarous
custom of railways in those days to make dogs
travel in boxes — followed. Yet Flush was not
afraid; they were escaping; they were leaving
tyrants and dog-stealers behind them. Rattle,
grind; grind, rattle as much as you like, he mur-
mured, as the train flung him this way and that;
only let us leave Wimpole Street and Whitechapel
behind us. At last the light broadened; the rattling
stopped. He heard birds singing and the sigh of
trees in the wind. Or was it the rush of water?
Opening his eyes at last, shaking his coat at last,
he saw — the most astonishing sight conceivable.
There was Miss Barrett on a rock in the midst of

102

ITALY

103

rushing waters. Trees bent over her; the river
raced round her. She must be in peril. With one
bound Flush splashed through the stream and
reached her. . he is baptized in Petrarch’s name”,
said Miss Barrett as he clambered up on to the rock
by her side. For they were at Vaucluse; she had
perched herself upon a stone in the middle of
Petrarch’s fountain.

Then there was more rattling and more grind-
ing; and then again he was stood down on a stable
floor; the darkness opened; light poured over him;
he found himself alive, awake, bewildered, stand-
ing on reddish tiles in a vast bare room flooded with
sunshine. He ran hither and thither smelling and
touching. There was no carpet and no fireplace.
There were no sofas, no armchairs, no bookcases,
no busts. Pungent and unfamiliar smells tickled
his nostrils and made him sneeze. The light,
infinitely sharp and clear, dazzled his eyes. He had
never been in a room — if this were indeed a room
— that was so hard, so bright, so big, so empty.
Miss Barrett looked smaller than ever sitting on a
chair by a table in the midst. Then Wilson took
him out of doors. He found himself almost blinded,
first by the sun, then by the shadow. One half of
the street was burning hot; the other bitterly cold.

104

FLUSH

Women went by wrapped in furs, yet they carried
parasols to shade their heads. And the street was dry
as bone. Though it was now the middle of November
there was neither mud nor puddle to wet his paws or
clot their feathers. There were no areas and no rail-
ings. There was none of that heady confusion of smells
that made a walk down Wimpole Street or Oxford
Street so distracting. On the other hand, the strange
new smells that came from sharp stone corners,
from dry yellow walls, were extraordinarily pun-
gent and queer. Then from behind a black swinging
curtain came an astonishing sweet smell, wafted
in clouds; he stopped, his paws raised, to savour
it; he made to follow it inside; he pushed in be-
neath the curtain. He had one glimpse of a booming
light-sprinkled hall, very high and hollow; and
then Wilson with a cry of horror, jerked him smartly
back. They went on down the street again. The
noise of the street was deafening. Everybody
seemed to be shouting shrilly at the same moment.
Instead of the solid and soporific hum of London
there was a rattling and a crying, a jingling and
a shouting, a cracking of whips and a jangling of
bells. Flush leapt and jumped this way and that,
and so did Wilson. They were forced on and off the
pavement twenty times, to avoid a cart, a bullock,

ITALY ^ 105

a troop of soldiers, a drove of goats. He felt younger,
spryer than he had done these many years. Dazzled,
yet exhilarated, he sank on the reddish tiles and
slept more soundly than he had ever slept in the
back bedroom at Wimpole Street upon pillows.

But soon Flush became aware of the more pro-
found differences that distinguish Pisa — for it was in
Pisa that they were now settled — from London. The
dogs were different. In London he could scarcely
trot round to the pillar-box without meeting some
pug dog, retriever, bulldog, mastiff, collie, New-
foundland, St. Bernard, fox terrier or one of the
seven famous families of the Spaniel tribe. To each
he gave a different name, and to each a different
rank. But here in Pisa, though dogs abounded,
there were no ranks; all — could it be possible? —
were mongrels. As far as he could see, they were
dogs merely — grey dogs, yellow dogs, brindled
dogs, spotted dogs; but it was impossible to detect
a single spaniel, collie, retriever or mastiff among
them. Had the Kennel Club, then, no jurisdiction
in Italy? Was the Spaniel Club unknown? Was
there no law which decreed death to the topknot,
which cherished the curled ear, protected the
feathered foot, and insisted absolutely that the
brow must be domed but not pointed? Apparently

io6

FLUSH

not. Flush felt himself like a prince in exile. He was
the sole aristocrat among a crowd of canaille. He
was the only pure-bred cocker spaniel in the whole
of Pisa.

For many years now Flush had been taught to
consider himself an aristocrat. The law of the purple
jar and of the chain had sunk deep into his soul.
It is scarcely surprising that he was thrown off his
balance. A Howard or a Cavendish set down
among a swarm of natives in mud huts can hardly
be blamed if now and again he remembers Chats-
worth and muses regretfully over red carpets and
galleries daubed with coronets as the sunset blazes
down through painted windows. There was an
element, it must be admitted, of the snob in Flush;
Miss Mitford had detected it years ago; and the
sentiment, subdued in London among equals and
superiors, returned to him now that he felt himself
unique. He became overbearing and impudent.
‘'Flush has grown an absolute monarch and barks
one distracted when he wants a door opened”,
Mrs. Browning wrote. "Robert”, she continued,
"declares that the said Flush considers him, my
husband, to be created for the especial purpose of
doing him service, and really it looks rather like
it.”

ITALY

107

“Robert”, “my husband” — if Flush had changed,
so had Miss Barrett. It was not merely that she
called herself Mrs. Browning now; that she flashed
the gold ring on her hand in the sun; she was
changed, as much as Flush was changed. Flush
heard her say “Robert”, “my husband”, fifty times
a day, and always with a ring of pride that made
his hackles rise and his heart jump. But it was not
her language only that had changed. She was a
different person altogether. Now, for instance,
instead of sipping a thimbleful of port and com-
plaining of the headache, she tossed off a tumbler
of Chianti and slept the sounder. There was a
flowering branch of oranges on the dinner -table
instead of one denuded, sour, yellow fruit. Then
instead of driving in a barouche landau to Regent’s
Park she pulled on her thick boots and scrambled
over rocks. Instead of sitting in a carriage and
rumbling along Oxford Street, they rattled off in
a ramshackle fly to the borders of a lake and looked
at mountains; and when she was tired she did not
hail another cab; she sat on a stone and watched
the lizards. She delighted in the sun; she delighted
in the cold. She threw pine logs from the Duke’s
forest on to the fire if it froze. They sat together
in the crackling blaze and snuffed up the sharp,

I08 FLUSH

aromatic scent. She was never tired of praising Italy
at the expense of England. . . our poor English’’,
she exclaimed, “want educating into gladness. They
want refining not in the fire but in the sunshine.”
Here in Italy was freedom and life and the joy that
the sun breeds. One never saw men fighting, or
heard them swearing; one never saw the Italians
drunk; — “the faces of those men” in Shoreditch
came again before her eyes. She was always com-
paring Pisa with London and saying how much she
preferred Pisa. In the streets of Pisa pretty women
could walk alone; great ladies first emptied their
own slops and then went to Court “in a blaze of
undeniable glory”. Pisa with all its bells, its
mongrels, its camels, its pine woods, was infinitely
preferable to Wimpole Street and its mahogany
doors and its shoulders of mutton. So Mrs. Brown-
ing every day, as she tossed off* her Chianti and
broke another orange from the branch, praised
Italy and lamented poor, dull, damp, sunless, joy-
less, expensive, conventional England.

Wilson, it is true, for a time maintained her
British balance. The memory of butlers and base-
ments, of front doors and curtains' was not obliter-
ated from her mind without an effort. She still
had the conscience to walk out of a picture gallery

ITALY

log

‘‘struck back by the indecency of the Venus”. And
later, when she was allowed, by the kindness of a
friend, to peep through a door at the glories of the
Grand Ducal Court, she still loyally upheld the
superior glory of St. James’s. ‘‘It . . . was all very
shabby”, she reported, “in comparison with our
English Court.” But even as she gazed, the superb
figure of one of the Grand Duke’s bodyguard
caught her eye. Her fancy was fired; her judgement
reeled; her standards toppled. Lily Wilson fell
passionately in love with Signor Righi, the guards-
man.

And just as Mrs. Browning was exploring her
new freedom and delighting in the discoveries she
made, so Flush too was making his discoveries and
exploring his freedom. Before they left Pisa — in
the spring of 1847 they moved on to Florence —
Flush had faced the curious and at first upsetting
truth that the laws of the Kennel Club are not
universal. He had brought himself to face the fact
that light topknots are not necessarily fatal. He
had revised his code accordingly. He had acted,
at first with some hesitation, upon his new concep-
tion of canine society. He was becoming daily more
and more democratic. Even in Pisa, Mrs. Browning
noticed, . . he goes out every day and speaks

no

FLUSH

Italian to the little dogs’’. Now in Florence the last
threads of his old fetters fell from him. The moment
of liberation came one day in the Cascine. As he
raced over the grass “like emeralds” with “the
pheasants all alive and flying”, Flush suddenly
bethought him of Regent’s Park and its proclama-
tion: Dogs must be led on chains. Where was
“must” now? Where were chains now? Where were
park-keepers and truncheons? Gone, with the dog-
stealers and Kennel Clubs and Spaniel Clubs of
a corrupt aristocracy! Gone with four-wheelers and
hansom cabs! with Whitechapel and Shoreditch!
He ran, he raced; his coat flashed; his eyes blazed.
He was the friend of all the world now. All dogs
were his brothers. He had no need of a chain in
this new world; he had no need of protection. If
Mr. Browning was late in going for his walk — he
and Flush were the best of friends now — Flush
boldly summoned him. He “stands up before him
and barks in the most imperious manner possible”,
Mrs. Browning observed with some irritation —
for her relations with Flush were far less emotional
now than in the old days; she no longer needed
his red fur and his bright eyes to give her what her
own experience lacked; she had found Pan for her-
self among the vineyards and the olive trees; he

ITALY

III

was there too beside the pine fire of an evening.
So if Mr. Browning loitered, Flush stood up and
barked; but if Mr. Browning preferred to stay at
home and write, it did not matter. Flush was in-
dependent now. The wistarias and the laburnum
were flowering over walls; the judas trees were
burning bright in the gardens ; the wild tulips were
sprinkled in the fields. Why should he wait? Off
he ran by himself. He was his own master now.

. . he goes out by himself, and stays hours to-
gether’’, Mrs. Browning wrote; . knows every
street in Florence — will have his own way in every-
thing. I am never frightened at his absence”, she
added, remembering with a smile those hours of
agony in Wimpole Street and the gang waiting to
snatch him up under the horses’ feet if she forgot
his chain in Vere Street. Fear was unknown in
Florence; there were no dog-stealers here and, she
may have sighed, there were no fathers.

But, to speak candidly, it was not to stare at
pictures, to penetrate into dark churches and look
up at dim frescoes, that Flush scampered off when
the door of Casa Guidi was left open. It was to
enjoy something, it was in search of something
denied him all these years. Once the hunting horn
of Venus had blown its wild music over the Berk-

II2

FLUSH

shire fields; he had loved Mr. Partridge’s dog; she
had borne him a child. Now he heard the same
voice pealing down the narrow streets of Florence,
but more imperiously, more impetuously, after all
these years of silence. Now Flush knew what men
can never know — love pure, love simple, love
entire; love that brings no train of care in its wake;
that has no shame; no remorse; that is here, that
is gone, as the bee on the flower is here and is gone.
To-day the flower is a rose, to-morrow a lily; now
it is the wild thistle on the moor, now the pouched
and portentous orchid of the conservatory. So
variously, so carelessly Flush embraced the spotted
spaniel down the alley, and the brindled dog and
the yellow dog — it did not matter which. To Flush
it was all the same. He followed the horn wherever
the horn blew and the wind wafted it. Love was
all; love was enough. No one blamed him for his
escapades. Mr. Browning merely laughed — “Quite
disgraceful for a respectable dog like him” — ^when
Flush returned very late at night or early the next
morning. And Mrs, Browning laughed too, as
Flush flung himself down on the bedroom floor and
slept soundly upon the arms of the Guidi family
inlaid in scagliola.

For at Gasa Guidi the rooms were bare. All those

ITALY

II3

draped objects of his cloistered and secluded days
had vanished. The bed was a bed; the wash-stand
was a wash-stand. Everything was itself and not
another thing. The drawing-room was large and
sprinkled with a few old carved chairs of ebony.
Over the fire hung a mirror with two cupids to
hold the lights. Mrs. Browning herself had dis-
carded her Indian shawls. She wore a cap made of
some thin bright silk that her husband liked. Her
hair was brushed in a new way. And when the sun
had gone down and the shutters had been raised
she paced the balcony dressed in thin white muslin.
She loved to sit there looking, listening, watching
the people in the street.

They had not been long in Florence before one
night there was such a shouting and trampling in
the street that they ran to the balcony to see what
was happening. A vast crowd was surging under-
neath. They were carrying banners and shouting
and singing. All the windows were full effaces; all
the balconies were full of figures. The people in the
windows were tossing flowers and laurel leaves on
to the people in the street; and the people in the
street — grave men, gay young women — ^were kiss-
ing each other and raising their babies to the people
in the balconies. Mr. and Mrs. Browning leant over

H

the balustrade and clapped and clapped. Banner
after banner passed. The torches flashed their light
on them. ‘‘Liberty’’ was written on one; “The
Union of Italy” on another; and “The Memory of
the Martyrs” and “Viva Pio Nono” and “Viva
Leopoldo Secondo” — ^for three and a half hours
the banners went by and the people cheered and
Mr. and Mrs. Browning stood with six candles
burning on the balcony, waving and waving. For
some time Flush too, stretched between them with
his paws over the sill, did his best to rejoice. But
at last — he could not conceal it — he yawned. “He
confessed at last that he thought they were rather
long about it”, Mrs. Browning observed. A weari-
ness, a doubt, a ribaldry possessed him. What was
it aU for? he asked himself. Who was this Grand
Duke and what had he promised? Why were they
all so absurdly excited? — ^for the ardour of Mrs.
Browning, waving and waving, as the banners
passed, somehow annoyed him. Such enthusiasm
for a Grand Duke was somehow exaggerated, he
felt. And then, as the Grand Duke passed, he be-
came aware that a little dog had stopped at the door.
Seizing his chance when Mrs. Browning was more
than usually enthusiastic, he slipped down from the
balcony and made off. Through the banners and the

ITALY

II5

crowds he followed her. She fled further and further
into the heart of Florence. Far away sounded the
shouting; the cheers of the people died down into
silence. The lights of the torches were extinguished.
Only a star or two shone in the ripples of the Arno
where Flush lay with the spotted spaniel by his side,
couched in the shell of an old basket on the mud.
There tranced in love they lay till the sun rose in
the sky. Flush did not return until nine next morn-
ing, and Mrs. Browning greeted him rather ironic-
ally — he might at least, she thought, have remem-
bered that it was the first anniversary of her
wedding day. But she supposed “he had been very
much amused’’. It was true. While she had found
an inexplicable satisfaction in the trampling of
forty thousand people, in the promises of Grand
Dukes and the windy aspirations of banners, Flush
infinitely preferred the little dog at the door.

It cannot be doubted that Mrs. Browning and
Flush were reaching different conclusions in their
voyages of discovery — she a Grand Duke, he a
spotted spaniel; — and yet the tie which bound
them together was undeniably still binding. No
sooner had Flush abolished “must” and raced
free through the emerald grass of the Cascine
gardens where the pheasants fluttered red and

ii6

FLUSH

gold, than he felt a check. Once more he was thrown
back on his haunches. At first it was nothing — a
hint merely — only that Mrs. Browning in the
spring of 1849 became busy with her needle. And
yet there was something in the sight that gave
Flush pause. She was not used to sew. He noted that
Wilson moved a bed and that she opened a drawer
to put white clothes inside it. Raising his head
from the tiled floor, he looked, he listened attent-
ively. Was something once more about to happen?
He looked anxiously for signs of trunks and packing.
Was there to be another flight, another escape?
But an escape to what, from what? There is nothing
to be afraid of here, he assured Mrs. Browning.
They need neither of them worry themselves in
Florence about Mr. Taylor and dogs’ heads
wrapped up in brown paper parcels. Yet he was
puzzled. The signs of change, as he read them, did
not signify escape. They signified, much more
mysteriously, expectance. Something; he felt, as he
watched Mrs. Browning so composedly, yet silently
and steadfastly, stitching in her low chair, was
coming that was inevitable; yet to be dreaded. As
the weeks went on, Mrs. Browning scarcely left the
house. She seemed, as she sat there, to anticipate
some tremendous event. Was she about to en-

ITALY

II7

counter somebody, like the ruffian Taylor, and let
him rain blows on her alone and unaided? Flush
quivered with apprehension at the thought. Cer-
tainly she had no intention of running away. No
boxes were packed. There was no sign that anybody
was about to leave the house — rather there were
signs that somebody was coming. In his jealous
anxiety Flush scrutinised each new-comer. There
were many now — Miss Blagden, Mr. Landor,
Hattie Hosmer, Mr. Lytton — ever so many ladies
and gentlemen now came to Casa Guidi. Day after
day Mrs. Browning sat there in her armchair
quietly stitching.

Then one day early in March Mrs. Browning
did not appear in the sitting-room at all. Other
people came in and out; Mr. Browning and Wilson
came in and out; and they came in and out so
distractedly that Flush hid himself under the sofa.
People were trampling up and down stairs, running
and calling in low whispers and muted unfamiliar
voices. They were moving upstairs in the bedroom.
He crept further and further under the shadow of
the sofa. He knew in every fibre of his body that
some change was taking place — some awful event
was happening. So he had waited, years ago, for
the step of the hooded man on the staircase. And

FLUSH

Il8

at last the door had opened and Miss Barrett had
cried ^‘Mr. Browning!” Who was coming now?
What hooded man? As the day wore on, he was left
completely alone; nobody came into the drawing-
room. He lay in the drawing-room without food or
drink; a thousand spotted spaniels might have
sniffed at the door and he would have shrunk away
from them. For as the hours passed he had an over-
whelming sense that something was thrusting its
way into the house from outside. He peeped out
from beneath the flounces. The cupids holding the
lights, the ebony chests, the French chairs, all
looked thrust asunder; he himself felt as if he were
being pushed up against the wall to make room
for something that he could not see. Once he saw
Mr. Browning, but he was not the same Mr.
Browning; once Wilson, but she was changed too —
as if they were both seeing the invisible presence
that he felt. Their eyes were oddly glazed.

At last Wilson, looking very flushed and untidy
but triumphant, took him in her arms and carried
him upstairs. They entered the bedroom. There
was a faint bleating in the shadowed room — some-
thing waved on the pillow. It was a live animal.
Independently of them all, without the street door
being opened, out of herself in the room, alone,

ITALY

II9

Mrs. Browning had become two people. The horrid
thing waved and mewed by her side. Torn with
rage and jealousy and some deep disgust that he
could not hide, Flush struggled himself free and
rushed downstairs. Wilson and Mrs. Browning
called him back; they tempted him with caresses;
they offered him titbits; but it was useless. He
cowered away from the disgusting sight, the re-
pulsive presence, wherever there was a shadowy
sofa or a dark corner. . for a whole fortnight he
fell into deep melancholy and was proof against all
attentions lavished on him” — so Mrs. Browning,
in the midst of all her other distractions, was forced
to notice. And when we take, as we must, human
minutes and hours and drop them into a dog’s
mind and see how the minutes swell into hours and
the hours into days, we shall not exaggerate if we
conclude that Flush’s ‘‘deep melancholy” lasted
six full months by the human clock. Many men and
women have forgotten their hates and their loves
in less.

But Flush was no longer the unschooled, un-
trained dog of Wimpole Street days. He had learnt
his lesson. Wilson had struck him. He had been
forced to swallow cakes that were stale when he
might have eaten them fresh; he had sworn to love

ISO

FLUSH

and not to bite. All this churned in his mind as he
lay under the sofa; and at last he issued out. Again
he was rewarded. At first, it must be admitted, the
reward was insubstantial if not positively disagree-
able. The baby was set on his back and Flush had
to trot about with the baby pulling his ears. But
he submitted with such grace, only turning round,
when his ears were pulled, ‘To kiss the little bare,
dimpled feet”, that, before three months had
passed, this helpless, weak, puling, muling lump
had somehow come to prefer him, “on the whole”
— so Mrs. Browning said — to other people. And
then, strangely enough, Flush found that he re-
turned the babyT affection. Did they not share
something in common — did not the baby somehow
resemble Flush in many ways? Did they not hold
the same views, the same tastes? For instance, in
the matter of scenery. To Flush all scenery was
insipid. He had never, all these years, learnt to
focus his eyes upon mountains. When they took
him to Vallombrosa all the splendours of its woods
had merely bored him. Now again, when the baby
was a few months old, they went on another of
those long expeditions in a travelling carriage. The
baby lay on his nurse’s lap; Flush sat on Mrs,
Browning’s knee. The carriage went on and on and

ITALY

I2I

on, painfully climbing the heights of the Apennines.
Mrs. Browning was almost beside herself with
delight. She could scarcely tear herself from the
window. She could not find words enough in the
whole of the English language to express what she
felt. . the exquisite, almost visionary scenery
of the Apennines, the wonderful variety of shape
and colour, the sudden transitions and vital in-
dividuality of those mountains, the chestnut forests
dropping by their own weight into the deep ravines,
the rocks cloven and clawed by the living torrents,
and the hills, hill above hill, piling up their grand
existences as if they did it themselves, changing
colour in the effort’’ — the beauty of the Apennines
brought words to birth in such numbers that they
positively crushed each other out of existence. But
the baby and Flush felt none of this stimulus, none
of this inadequacy. Both were silent. Flush drew “in
his head from the window and didn’t consider it
worth looking at. . . . He has a supreme contempt
for trees and hills or anything of that kind”, Mrs.
Browning concluded. The carriage rumbled on.
Flush slept and the baby slept. Then at last there
were lights and houses and men and women passing
the windows. They had entered a village. In-
stantly Flush was all attention. “. . . his eyes were

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startingoutofhishead with eagerness; he looked east,
he looked west, you would conclude that he was
taking notes or preparing them.’’ It was the human
scene that stirred him. Beauty, so it seems at least,
had to be crystallised into a green or violet powder
and puffed by some celestial syringe down the
fringed channels that lay behind his nostrils before
it touched Flush’s senses; and then it issued not in
words, but in a silent rapture. Where Mrs. Brown-
ing saw, he smelt; where she wrote, he snuffed.

Here, then, the biographer must perforce come
to a pause. Where two or three thousand words
are insufficient for what we see — and Mrs. Browning
had to admit herself beaten by the Apennines: ^‘Of
these things I cannot give you any idea”, she
admitted — there are no more than two words and
one-half for what we smell. The human nose
is practically non-existent. The greatest poets in
the world have smelt nothing but roses on the
one hand, and dung on the other. The infinite
gradations that lie between are unrecorded. Yet
it was in the world of smell that Flush mostly lived.
Love was chiefly smell; form and colour were
smell; music and architecture, law, politics and
science were smell. To him religion itself was smell.
To describe his simplest experience with the daily

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chop or biscuit is beyond our power. Not even Mr.
Swinburne could have said what the smell of Wim-
pole Street meant to Flush on a hot afternoon in
June. As for describing the smell of a spaniel mixed
with the smell of torches, laurels, incense, banners,
wax candles and a garland of rose leaves crushed
by a satin heel that has been laid up in camphor,
perhaps Shakespeare, had he paused in the middle
of writing Antony and Cleopatra — But Shakespeare
did not pause. Confessing our inadequacy, then,
we can but note that to Flush Italy, in these the
fullest, the freest, the happiest years of his life,
meant mainly a succession of smells. Love, it must
be supposed, was gradually losing its appeal.
Smell remained. Now that they were established
in Casa Guidi again, all had their avocations. Mr.
Browning wrote regularly in one room; Mrs.
Browning wrote regularly in another. The baby
played in the nursery. But Flush wandered off into
the streets of Florence to enjoy the rapture of smell.
He threaded his path through main streets and back
streets, through squares and alleys, by smell. He
nosed his way from smell to smell; the rough, the
smooth, the dark, the golden. He went in and out,
up and down, where they beat brass, where they
bake bread, where the women sit combing their

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hair, where the bird-cages are piled high on the
causeway, where the wine spills itself in dark red
stains on the pavement, where leather smells and
harness and garlic, where cloth is beaten, where
vine leaves tremble, where men sit and drink and
spit and dice — he ran in and out, always with his
nose to the ground, drinking in the essence; or
with his nose in the air vibrating with the aroma.
He slept in this hot patch of sun — how sun made
the stone reek! he sought that tunnel of shade —
how acid shade made the stone smell! He devoured
whole bunches of ripe grapes largely because of
their purple smell; he chewed and spat out what-
ever tough relic of goat or macaroni the Italian
housewife had thrown from the balcony — goat and
macaroni were raucous smells, crimson smells. He
followed the swooning sweetness of incense into the
violet intricacies of dark cathedrals; and, sniffing,
tried to lap the gold on the window-stained tomb.
Nor was his sense of touch much less acute. He
knew Florence in its marmoreal smoothness and
in its gritty and cobbled roughness. Hoary folds of
drapery, smooth fingers and feet of stone received
the lick of his tongue, the quiver of his shivering
snout. Upon the infinitely sensitive pads of his feet
he took the clear stamp of proud Latin inscriptions.

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125

In shorty he knew Florence as no human being has
ever known it; as Ruskin never knew it or George
Eliot either. He knew it as only the dumb know.
Not a single one of his myriad sensations ever sub-
mitted itself to the deformity of words.

But though it would be pleasant for the bio-
grapher to infer that Flush’s life in late middle age
was an orgy of pleasure transcending all descrip-
tion; to maintain that while the baby day by day
picked up a new word and thus removed sensation
a little further beyond reach. Flush was fated to
remain for ever in a Paradise where essences exist
in their utmost purity, and the naked soul of things
presses on the naked nerve — it would not be true.
Flush lived in no such Paradise. The spirit, ranging
from star to star, the bird whose furthest flight over
polar snows or tropical forests never brings it
within sight of human houses and their curling
wood-smoke, may, for anything we know, enjoy
such immunity, such integrity of bliss. But Flush
had lain upon human knees and heard men’s
voices. His flesh was veined with human passions;
he knew all grades of jealousy, anger and despair.
Now in summer he was scourged by fleas. With a
cruel irony the sun that ripened the grapes brought
also the fleas. . Savonarola’s martyrdom here

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FLUSH

in Florence’’, wrote Mrs. Browning, ‘‘is scarcely
worse than Flush’s in the summer.” Fleas leapt to
life in every corner of the Florentine houses; they
skipped and hopped out of every cranny of the old
stone; out of every fold of old tapestry; out of every
cloak, hat and blanket. They nested in Flush’s fur.
They bit their way into the thickest of his coat.
He scratched and tore. His health suffered; he be-
came morose, thin and feverish. Miss Mitford was
appealed to. What remedy was there, Mrs. Brown-
ing wrote anxiously, for fleas? Miss Mitford, still
sitting in her greenhouse at Three Mile Cross, still
writing tragedies, put down her pen and looked
up her old prescriptions — ^what Mayflower had
taken, what Rosebud. But the fleas of Reading die
at a pinch. The fleas of Florence are red and virile.
To them Miss Mitford’s powders might well have
been snuff. In despair Mr. and Mrs. Browning
went down on their knees beside a pail of water
and did their best to exorcise the pest with soap
and scrubbing-brush. It was in vain. At last one
day Mr. Browning, taking Flush for a walk,
noticed that people pointed; he heard a man lay
a finger to his nose and whisper “La rogna”
(mange). As by this time “Robert is as fond of
Flush as I am”, to take his walk of an afternoon

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127

with a friend and to hear him thus stigmatised was
intolerable. Robert, his wife wrote, “wouldnH bear it
any longer”. Only one remedy remained, but it was
a remedy that was almost as drastic as the disease
itself. However democratic Flush had become and
careless of the signs of rank, he still remained what
Philip Sidney had called him, a gentleman by
birth. He carried his pedigree on his back. His coat
meant to him what a gold watch inscribed with
the family arms means to an impoverished squire
whose broad acres have shrunk to that single circle.
It was the coat that Mr. Browning now proposed
to sacrifice. He called Flush to him and, ‘‘taking a
pair of scissors, clipped him all over into the likeness
of a lion”.

As Robert Browning snipped, as the insignia of
a cocker spaniel fell to the floor, as the travesty of
quite a different animal rose round his neck. Flush
felt himself emasculated, diminished, ashamed.
What am I now? he thought, gazing into the glass.
And the glass replied with the brutal sincerity of
glasses, “You are nothing”. He was nobody. Cer-
tainly he was no longer a cocker spaniel. But as he
gazed, his ears bald now, and uncurled, seemed to
twitch. It was as if the potent spirits of truth and
laughter were whispering in them. To be nothing —

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FLUSH

is that not, after all, the most satisfactory state in the
whole world? He looked again. There was his ruff.
To caricature the pomposity of those who claim
that they, are something — was that not in its way
a career? Anyhow, settle the matter as he might,
there could be no doubt that he was free from
fleas. He shook his ruff. He danced on his nude,
attenuated legs. His spirits rose. So might a great
beauty, rising from a bed of sickness and finding
her face eternally disfigured, make a bonfire of
clothes and cosmetics, and laugh with joy to think
that she need never look in the glass again or dread
a lover’s coolness or a rival’s beauty. So might a
clergyman, cased for twenty years in starch and
broadcloth, cast his collar into the dustbin and
snatch the works of Voltaire from the cupboard.
So Flush scampered off clipped all over into the
likeness of a lion, but free from fleas. “Flush”, Mrs.
Browning wrote to her sister, “is wise.” She was
thinking perhaps of the Greeks saying that happiness
is only to be reached through suffering. The true
philosopher is he who has lost his coat but is free
from fleas.

But Flush had not long to wait before his newly
won philosophy was put to the test. Again in the
summer of 1852 there were signs at Casa Guidi of

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one of those crises which, gathering soundlessly
as a drawer opens or as a piece of string is left
dangling from a box, are to a dog as menacing as
the clouds which foretell lightning to a shepherd
or as the rumours which foretell war to a statesman.
Another change was indicated, another journey.
Well, what of that? Trunks were hauled down and
corded. The baby was carried out in his nurse’s
arms. Mr. and Mrs. Browning appeared, dressed
for travelling. There was a cab at the door. Flush
waited philosophically in the hall. When they were
ready he was ready. Now that they were all seated in
the carriage, with one bound Flush sprang lightly
in after them. To Venice, to Rome, to Paris —
where were they going? All countries were equal
to him now; all men were his brothers. He had
learnt that lesson for himself. But when finally
he emerged from obscurity he had need of all his
philosophy — he was in London.

Houses spread to right and left in sharp avenues
of regular brick. The pavement was cold and hard
beneath his feet. And there, issuing from a mahog-
any door with a brass knocker, was a lady bounti-
fully apparelled in flowing robes of purple plush.
A light wreath starred with flowers rested on her
hair. Gathering her draperies about her, she glanced

I

130

FLUSH

disdainfully up and down the street while a foot-
man, stooping, let down the step of the barouche
landau. All Welbeck Street — for Welbeck Street it
was — was wrapped in a splendour of red light — a
light not clear and fierce like the Italian light, but
tawny and troubled with the dust of a million
wheels, with the trampling of a million hooves. The
London season was at its height. A pall of sound,
a cloud of interwoven humming, fell over the city
in one confluent growl. By came a majestic deer-
hound led on a chain by a page. A policeman,
swinging past with rhythmical stride, cast his bull’s-
eye from side to side. Odours of stew, odours of beef,
odours of basting, odours of beef and cabbage rose
from a thousand basements. A flunkey in livery
dropped a letter into a box.

Overcome by the magnificence of the metro-
polis, Flush paused for a moment with his foot on
the door-step. Wilson paused too. How paltry it
seemed now, the civilisation of Italy, its Courts and
its revolutions, its Grand Dukes and their body-
guards ! She thanked God, as the policeman passed,
that she had not married Signor Righi after all.
And then a sinister figure issued from the public-
house at the corner. A man leered. With one spring
Flush bolted indoors.

For some weeks now he was closely confined to
a lodging-house sitting-room in Welbeck Street.
For confinement was still necessary. The cholera
had come, and it is true that the cholera had done
something to improve the condition of the Rook-
eries; but not enough, for still dogs were stolen and
the dogs of Wimpole Street had still to be led on
chains. Flush went into society, of course. He met
dogs at the pillar-box and outside the public-house;
they welcomed him back with the inherent good
breeding of their kind. Just as an English peer
who has lived a lifetime in the East and contracted
some of the habits of the natives — rumour hints
indeed that he has turned Moslem and had a son
by a Chinese washerwoman — finds, when he takes
his place at Court, that old friends are ready enough
to overlook these aberrations and he is asked to
Chatsworth, though no mention is made of his
wife and it is taken for granted that he will join
the family at prayers — so the pointers and setters
of Wimpole Street welcomed Flush among them
and overlooked the condition of his coat. But there
was a certain morbidity, it seemed to Flush now,
among the dogs of London. It was common know-
ledge that Mrs. Carlyle’s dog Nero had leapt from a
top storey window with the intention of committing

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suicide. He had found the strain of life in Cheyne
Row intolerable, it was said. Indeed Flush could
well believe it now that he was back again in Wel-
beck Street. The confinement, the crowd of little
objects, the blackbeetles by night, the bluebottles
by day, the lingering odours of mutton, the per-
petual presence on the sideboard of bananas — all
this, together with the proximity of several men
and women, heavily dressed and not often or
indeed completely washed, wrought on his temper
and strained his nerves. He lay for hours under
the lodging-house chiffonier. It was impossible to
run out of doors. The front door was always locked.
He had to wait for somebody to lead him on a
chain.

Two incidents alone broke the monotony of the
weeks he spent in London. One day late that summer
the Brownings went to visit the Rev. Charles
Kingsley at Farnham. In Italy the earth would
have been bare and hard as brick. Fleas would have
been rampant. Languidly one would have dragged
oneself from shadow to shadow, grateful even for
the bar of shade cast by the raised arm of one of
Donatello’s statues. But here at Farnham there
were fields of green grass; there were pools of blue
water; there were woods that murmured, and turf

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133

SO fine that the paws bounced as they touched it.
The Brownings and the Kingsleys spent the day
together. And once more, as Flush trotted behind
them, the old trumpets blew; the old ecstasy re-
turned — was it hare or was it fox? Flush tore over
the heaths of Surrey as he had not run since the
old days at Three Mile Gross. A pheasant went
rocketing up in a spurt of purple and gold. He had
almost shut his teeth on the tail feathers when a
voice rang out. A whip cracked. Was it the Rev.
Charles Kingsley who called him sharply to heel?
At any rate he ran no more. The woods of Farnham
were strictly preserved.

A few days later he was lying in the sitting-room
at Welbeck Street, when Mrs. Browning came in
dressed for walking and called him from under the
chiffonier. She slipped the chain on to his collar
and, for the first time since September 1846, they
walked up Wimpole Street together. When they
came to the door of No. 50 they stopped as of
old. Just as of old they waited. The butler just
as of old was very slow in coming. At length the
door opened. Could that be Catiline lying couched
on the mat? The old toothless dog yawned and
stretched himself and took no notice. Upstairs they
crept as stealthily, as silently as once before they

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FLUSH

had come down. Very quietly, opening the doors as
if she were afraid of what she might see there, Mrs.
Browning went from room to room. A gloom
descended upon her as she looked. . they seemed

to me”, she wrote, “smaller and darker, somehow,
and the furniture wanted fitness and convenience.”
The ivy was still tapping on the back bedroom
window-pane. The painted blind still obscured the
houses. Nothing had been changed. Nothing had
happened all these years. So she went from room
to room, sadly remembering. But long before she
had finished her inspection. Flush was in a fever
of anxiety. Suppose Mr. Barrett were to come in
and find them? Suppose that with one frown
he turned the key and locked them in the back
bedroom for ever? At last Mrs. Browning shut the
doors and went downstairs again very quietly.
Yes, she said, it seemed to her that the house
wanted cleaning.

After that. Flush had only one wish left in him —
to leave London, to leave England for ever. He was
not happy until he found himself on the deck of the
Channel steamer crossing to France. It was a rough
passage. The crossing took eight hours. As the
steamer tossed and wallowed. Flush turned over
in his mind a tumult of mixed memories — of ladies

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135

in purple plush, of ragged men with bags; of
Regent’s Park, and Queen Victoria sweeping past
with outriders; of the greenness of English grass
and the rankness of English pavements — all this
passed through his mind as he lay on deck; and,
looking up, he caught sight of a stern, tall man
leaning over the rail.

^'Mr. Carlyle!” he heard Mrs. Browning ex-
claim; whereupon — the crossing, it must be re-
membered, was a bad one — Flush was violently
sick. Sailors came running with pails and mops.
“. . . he was ordered off the deck on purpose, poor
dog”, said Mrs. Browning. For the deck was still
English; dogs must not be sick on decks. Such was
his last salute to the shores of his native land.

CHAPTER VI

THE END

Flush was growing an old dog now. The journey
to England and all the memories it revived had
undoubtedly tired him. It was noticed that he
sought the shade rather than the sun on his return,
though the shade of Florence was hotter than the
sun of Wimpole Street. Stretched beneath a statue,
couched under the lip of a fountain for the sake of
the few drops that spurted now and again on to his
coat, he would lie dozing by the hour. The young
dogs would come about him. To them he would
tell his stories of Whitechapel and Wimpole Street;
he would describe the smell of clover and the smell
of Oxford Street; he would rehearse his memories
of one revolution and another — how Grand Dukes
had come and Grand Dukes had gone; but the
spotted spaniel down the alley on the left — she
goes on for ever, he would say. Then violent Mr.
Landor would hurry by and shake his fist at him
in mock fury; kind Miss Isa Blagden would pause
136

THE END

137

and take a sugared biscuit from her reticule. The
peasant women in the market-place made him a
bed of leaves in the shadow of their baskets and
tossed him a bunch of grapes now and then. He
was known, he was liked by all Florence — gentle
and simple, dogs and men.

But he was growing an old dog now, and he
tended more and more to lie not even under the
fountain — ^for the cobbles were too hard for his old
bones — but in Mrs. Browning’s bedroom where
the arms of the Guidi family made a smooth patch
of scagliola on the floor, or in the drawing-room
under the shadow of the drawing-room table. One
day shortly after his return from London he was
stretched there fast asleep. The deep and dreamless
sleep of old age was heavy on him. Indeed to-day
his sleep was deeper even than usual, for as he
slept the darkness seemed to thicken round him.
If he dreamt at all, he dreamt that he was sleeping
in the heart of a primeval forest, shut from the
light of the sun, shut from the voices of mankind,
though now and again as he slept he dreamt that
he heard the sleepy chirp of a dreaming bird, or,
as the wind tossed the branches, the mellow
chuckle of a brooding monkey.

Then suddenly the branches parted; the light

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FLUSH

broke in — here, there, in dazzling shafts. Monkeys
chattered; birds rose crying and calling in alarm.
He started to his feet wide awake. An astonishing
commotion was all round him. He had fallen
asleep between the bare legs of an ordinary draw-
ing-room table. Now he was hemmed in by the
billowing of skirts and the heaving of trousers. The
table itself, moreover, was swaying violently from
side to side. He did not know which way to run.
What on earth was happening? What in Heaven’s
name possessed the drawing-room table? He lifted
up his voice in a prolonged howl of interrogation.

To Flush’s question no satisfactory answer can
here be given. A few facts, and those of the baldest,
are all that can be supplied. Briefly, then, it would
appear that early in the nineteenth century the
Countess of Blessington had bought a crystal ball
from a magician. Her Ladyship “never could
understand the use of it”; indeed she had never
been able to see anything in the ball except crystal.
After her death, however, there was a sale of her
effects and the ball came into the possession of
others who “looked deeper, or with purer eyes”,
and saw other things in the ball besides crystal.
Whether Lord Stanhope was the purchaser,
whether it was he who looked “with purer eyes”.

THE END

139

is not stated. But certainly by the year 1852 Lord
Stanhope was in possession of a crystal ball and
Lord Stanhope had only to look into it to see among
other things ^'the spirits of the sun”. Obviously this
was not a sight that a hospitable nobleman could
keep to himself, and Lord Stanhope was in the
habit of displaying his ball at luncheon parties and
of inviting his friends to see the spirits of the sun
also. There was something strangely delightful —
except indeed to Mr. Chorley — in the spectacle;
balls became the rage; and luckily a London
optician soon discovered that he could make them,
without being either an Egyptian or a magician,
though naturally the price of English crystal was
high. Thus many people in the early ’fifties became
possessed of balls, though ‘'many persons”, Lord
Stanhope said, “use the balls, without the moral
courage to confess it”. The prevalence of spirits in
London indeed became so marked that some alarm
was felt; and Lord Stanley suggested to Sir Edward
Lytton “that the Government should appoint a com-
mittee of investigation so as to get as far as possible
at the facts”. Whether the rumour of an approach-
ing Government committee alarmed the spirits,
or whether spirits, like bodies, tend to multiply in
close confinement, there can be no doubt that the

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FLUSH

spirits began to show signs of restlessness, and,
escaping in vast numbers, took up their residence
in the legs of tables. Whatever the motive, the
policy was successful. Crystal balls were expensive;
almost everybody owns a table. Thus when Mrs.
Browning returned to Italy in the winter of 1852
she found that the spirits had preceded her; the
tables of Florence were almost universally infected.
“From the Legation to the English chemists’’, she
wrote, “people are ‘serving tables’ , . . everywhere.
When people gather round a table it isn’t to play
whist.” No, it was to decipher messages conveyed
by the legs of tables. Thus if asked the age of a
child, the table “expresses itself intelligently by
knocking with its legs, responses according to the
alphabet”. And if a table could tell you that your
own child was four years old, what limit was there
to its capacity? Spinning tables were advertised in
shops. The walls were placarded with advertise-
ments of wonders ^^scoperte a Livorno^ \ By the year
1854, so rapidly did the movement spread, “four
hundred thousand families in America had given
their names ... as actually in enjoyment of spiritual
intercourse”. And from England the news came
that Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton had imported
“several of the American rapping spirits” to

THE END

I41

Knebworth, with the happy result — so little
Arthur Russell was informed when he beheld a
‘‘strange-looking old gentleman in a shabby dress-
ing-gown*’ staring at him at breakfast — that Sir
Edward Bulwer Lytton believed himself invisible.

When Mrs. Browning first looked into Lord
Stanhope’s crystal ball at a luncheon party she
saw nothing — except indeed that it was a remark-
able sign of the times. The spirit of the sun indeed
told her that she was about to go to Rome; but as
she was not about to go to Rome, she contradicted
the spirits of the sun, ‘'But”, she added, with truth,
‘T love the marvellous.” She was nothing if not
adventurous. She had gone to Manning Street at the
risk of her life. She had discovered a world that she
had never dreamt of within half an hour’s drive from
Wimpole Street. Why should there not be another
world only half a moment’s flight from Florence
— a better world, a more beautiful world, where
the dead live, trying in vain to reach us? At any rate
she would take the risk. And so she sat herself down
at the table too. And Mr. Lytton, the brilliant son
of an invisible father, came; and Mr. Frederick
Tennyson, and Mr. Powers and M. Villari — they
all sat at the table, and then when the table had
done kicking, they sat on drinking tea and eating

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FLUSH

strawberries and cream, with "Tlorence dissolving
in the purple of the hills and the stars looking on”,
talking and talking: . what stories we told, and

what miracles we swore to! Oh, we are believers
here, Isa, except Robert. ...” Then in burst deaf
Mr. Kirkup with his bleak white beard. He had
come round simply to exclaim, ‘‘There is a spiritual
world — there is a future state. I confess it. I am
convinced at last.” And when Mr. Kirkup, whose
creed had always been “the next thing to atheism”,
was converted merely because, in spite of his deaf-
ness, he had heard “three taps so loud that they
made him leap”, how could Mrs. Browning keep
her hands off the table? “You know I am rather
a visionary and inclined to knock round at all the
doors of the present world to try to get out”, she
wrote. So she summoned the faithful to Casa Guidi;
and there they sat with their hands on the drawing-
room table, trying to get out.

Flush started up in the wildest apprehension.
The skirts and the trousers were billowing round
him; the table was standing on one leg. But what-
ever the ladies and gentlemen round the table
could hear and see, Flush could hear and see
nothing. True, the table was standing on one leg,
but so tables will if you lean hard on one side. He

THE END

143

had upset tables himself and been well scolded for
it. But now there was Mrs. Browning with her
great eyes wide open staring as if she saw something
marvellous outside. Flush rushed to the balcony
and looked over. Was there another Grand Duke
riding by with banners and torches? Flush could see
nothing but an old beggar woman crouched at the
corner of the street over her basket of melons. Yet
clearly Mrs. Browning saw something; clearly she
saw something that was very wonderful. So in the
old Wimpole Street days she had wept once without
any reason that he could see; and again she had
laughed, holding up a blotted scrawl. But this was
different. There was something in her look now
that frightened him. There was something in the
room, or in the table, or in the petticoats and
trousers, that he disliked exceedingly.

As the weeks passed, this preoccupation of Mrs.
Browning’s with the invisible grew upon her. It
might be a fine hot day, but instead of watching
the lizards slide in and out of the stones, she would
sit at the table; it might be a dark starry night, but
instead of reading in her book, or passing her hand
over paper, she would call, if Mr. Browning were
out, for Wilson, and Wilson would come yawning.
Then they would sit at the table together until that

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FLUSH

article of furniture, whose chief function it was
to provide shade, kicked on the floor, and Mrs.
Browning exclaimed that it was telling Wilson that
she would soon be ill. Wilson replied that she was
only sleepy. But soon Wilson herself, the implacable,
the upright, the British, screamed and went into
a faint, and Mrs. Browning was rushing hither and
thither to find ‘‘the hygienic vinegar”. That, to
Flush, was a highly unpleasant way of spending
a quiet evening. Better far to sit and read one’s
book.

Undoubtedly the suspense, the intangible but
disagreeable odour, the kicks and the screams and
the vinegar, told upon Flush’s nerves. It was all
very well for the baby, Penini, to pray “that
Flush’s hair may grow”; that was an aspiration
that Flush could understand. But this form of
prayer which required the presence of evil-smelling,
seedy-looking men and the antics of a piece of
apparently solid mahogany, angered him much
as they angered that robust, sensible, well-dressed
man, his master. But far worse than any smell to
Flush, far worse than any antics, was the look on
Mrs. Browning’s face when she gazed out of the
window as if she were seeing something that was
wonderful when there was nothing. Flush stood

THE END

145

himself in front of her. She looked through him as
if he were not there. That was the cruellest look
she had ever given him. It was worse than her cold
anger when he bit Mr. Browning in the leg; worse
than her sardonic laughter when the door shut
upon his paw in Regent’s Park. There were
moments indeed when he regretted Wimpole
Street and its tables. The tables at No. 50 had
never tilted upon one leg. The little table with the
ring round it that held her precious ornaments
had always stood perfectly still. In those far-off
days he had only to leap on her sofa and Miss
Barrett started wide-awake and looked at him.
Now, once more, he leapt on to her sofa. But she
did not notice him. She was writing. She paid no
attention to him. She went on writing — “also, at
the request of the medium, the spiritual hands
took from the table a garland which lay there, and
placed it upon my head. The particular hand
which did this was of tlie largest human size, as
white as snow, and very beautiful. It was as near
to me as this hand I write with, and I saw it as
distinctly.” Flush pawed her sharply. She looked
through him as if he were invisible. He leapt off
the sofa and ran downstairs into the street.

It was a blazing hot afternoon. The old beggar

K

146

FLUSH

woman at the corner had fallen asleep over her
melons. The sun seemed droning in the sky. Keep-
ing to the shady side of the street. Flush trotted
along the well-known ways to the market-place.
The whole square was brilliant with awnings and
stalls and bright umbrellas. The market women
were sitting beside baskets of fruit; pigeons were
fluttering, bells were pealing, whips were cracking.
The many-coloured mongrels of Florence were
running in and out sniffing and pawing. All was
as brisk as a bee-hive and as hot as an oven. Flush
sought the shade. He flung himself down beside
his friend Catterina, under the shadow of her great
basket. A brown jar of red and yellow flowers
cast a shadow beside it. Above them a statue,
holding his right arm outstretched, deepened
the shade to violet. Flush lay there in the cool,
watching the young dogs busy with their own
affairs. They were snarling and biting, stretching
and tumbling, in all the abandonment of youthful
joy. They were chasing each other in and out,
round and round, as he had once chased the
spotted spaniel in the alley. His thoughts turned to
Reading for a moment — to Mr. Partridge’s spaniel,
to his first love, to the ecstasies, the innocences of
youth. Well, he had had his day. He did not grudge

THE END

147

them theirs. He had found the world a pleasant
place to live in. He had no quarrel with it now.
The market woman scratched him behind the ear.
She had often cuffed him for stealing a grape, or for
some other misdemeanour; but he was old now;
and she was old. He guarded her melons and she
scratched his ear. So she knitted and he dozed. The
flies buzzed on the great pink melon that had been
sliced open to show its flesh.

The sun burnt deliciously through the lily leaves,
and through the green and white umbrella. The
marble statue tempered its heat to a champagne
freshness. Flush lay and let it burn through his fur to
the naked skin. And when he was roasted on one side
he turned over and let the sun roast the other. All the
time the market people were chattering and bargain-
ing; market women were passing; they were stopping
and fingering the vegetables and the fruit. There
was a perpetual buzz and hum of human voices such
as Flush loved to listen to. After a time he drowsed
off under the shadow of the lilies. He slept as
dogs sleep when they are dreaming. Now his legs
twitched — ^was he dreaming that he hunted rabbits
in Spain? Was he coursing up a hot hill-side with
dark men shouting ‘'Span! Span!” as the rabbits
darted from the brushwood? Then he lay still again.

K 2

148

FLUSH

And now he yelped, quickly, softly, many times
in succession. Perhaps he heard Dr, Mitford egging
his greyhounds on to the hunt at Reading. Then
his tail wagged sheepishly. Did he hear old Miss
Mitford cry “Bad dog! Bad dog!” as he slunk back
to her, where she stood among the turnips waving
her umbrella? And then he lay for a time snoring,
wrapt in the deep sleep of happy old age. Suddenly
every muscle in his body twitched. He woke with
a violent start. Where did he think he was? In
Whitechapel among the ruffians? Was the knife at
his throat again?

Whatever it was, he woke from his dream in a
state of terror. He made off as if he were flying to
safety, as if he were seeking refuge. The market
women laughed and pelted him with rotten grapes
and called him back. He took no notice. Cart-
wheels almost crushed him as he darted through the
streets — the men standing up to drive cursed him
and flicked him with their whips. Half-naked
children threw pebbles at him and shouted ^^Matta!
Matta!^^ as he fled past. Their mothers ran to the
door and caught them back in alarm. Had he
then gone mad? Had the sun turned his brain? Or
had he once more heard the hunting horn of
Venus? Or had one of the American rapping

THE END

149

spirits, one of the spirits that live in table legs,
got possession of him at last? Whatever it was,
he went in a bee-line up one street and down
another until he reached the door of Casa Guidi.
He made his way straight upstairs and went
straight into the drawing-room.

Mrs. Browning was lying, reading, on the sofa.
She looked up, startled, as he came in. No, it was
not a spirit — it was only Flush. She laughed. Then,
as he leapt on to the sofa and thrust his face into
hers, the words of her own poem came into her
mind:

You see this dog. It was but yesterday

I mused forgetful of his presence here

Till thought on thought drew downward tear on tear,

When from the pillow, where wet-cheeked I lay,

A head as hairy as Faunus, thrust its way
Right sudden against my face, — two golden-clear
Great eyes astonished mine, — a drooping ear
Did flap me on either cheek to dry the spray!

I started first, as some Arcadian,

Amazed by goatly god in twilight grove;

But, as the bearded vision closelier ran
My tears off, I knew Flush, and rose above
Surprise and sadness, — thanking the true Pan,

Who, by low creatures, leads to heights of love.

She had written that poem one day years ago in
Wimpole Street when she was very unhappy. Now

150

FLUSH

she was happy. She was growing old now and so
was Flush. She bent down over him for a moment.
Her face with its wide mouth and its great eyes and
its heavy curls was still oddly like his. Broken
asunder, yet made in the same mould, each, per-
haps, completed what was dormant in the other.
But she was woman; he was dog. Mrs. Browning
went on reading. Then she looked at Flush again.
But he did not look at her. An extraordinary change
had come over him. ‘Tlush!” she cried. But he
was silent. He had been alive; he was now dead.
That was all. The drawing-room table, strangely
enough, stood perfectly still.

AUTHORITIES

It must be admitted that there are very few
authorities for the foregoing biography. But the
reader who would like to check the facts or to
pursue the subject further is referred to:

To Fltishf My Dog. | Poems by Elizabeth Barrett

Fltishi or Faunus. J Browning.

The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett
Barrett. 2 vols.

The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, edited by
Frederick Kenyon. 2 vols.

The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning addressed to
Richard Hengist Horne, edited by S. R. Townshend Mayer.
2 vols.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning: letters to her sister iS^S-iS^g,
edited by Leonard Huxley, LL.D.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning in her Letters, by Percy Lub-
bock.

References to Flush are to be found in the Letters of
Mary Russell Mitford, edited by H. Chorley. 2 vols.

For an account of London Rookeries, The Rookeries of
London, by Thomas Beames, 1850, may be consulted.

151

NOTES

P. 24. ‘'painted fabric”. Miss Barrett says, ‘T
had a transparent blind put up in my open
window”. She adds, ‘‘papa insults me with the
analogy of a back window in a confectioner’s shop,
but is obviously moved when the sunshine lights
up the castle, notwithstanding”. Some hold that
the castle, etc., was painted on a thin metallic
substance; others that it was a muslin blind richly
embroidered. There seems no certain way of
settling the matter.

P. 41. “Mr. Kenyon mumbled slightly because
he had lost two front teeth.” There are elements of
exaggeration and conjecture here. Miss Mitford is
the authority. She is reported to have said in con-
versation with Mr. Horne, “Our dear friend, you
are aware, never sees anybody but the members of
her own family, and one or two others. She has a
high opinion of the skill in reading as well as the fine

taste, of Mr. , and she gets him to read her

new poems aloud to her. ... So Mr. stands

upon the hearth-rug, and uplifts the MS., and his
voice, while our dear friend lies folded up in Indian

152

NOTES

153

shawls upon her sofa, with her long black tresses
streaming over her bent-down head, all attention.

Now, dear Mr. has lost a front tooth — not

quite a front one, but a side front one — and this,
you see, causes a defective utterance ... an
amiable indistinctness, a vague softening of syllables
into each other, so that silence and ilence would
really sound very like one another. . . There can

be little doubt that Mr. was Mr. Kenyon; the

blank was necessitated by the peculiar delicacy of
the Victorians with regard to teeth. But more
important questions affecting English literature are
involved. Miss Barrett has long been accused of a
defective ear. Miss Mitford maintains that Mr.
Kenyon should rather be accused of defective
teeth. On the other hand, Miss Barrett herself
maintained that her rhymes had nothing to do
with his lack of teeth or with her lack of ear. ‘‘A
great deal of attention”, she wrote, — ^far more
than it would have taken to rhyme with complete
accuracy — have I given to the subject of rhymes
and have determined in cold blood to hazard some
experiments.” Hence she rhymed ^'angels” with
“candles”, “heaven” with “unbelieving”, and
“islands” with “silence” — ^in cold blood. It is of
course for the professors to decide; but anybody
who has studied Mrs. Browning’s character and
her actions will be inclined to take the view
that she was a wilful breaker of rules whether

154

FLUSH

of art or of love^ and so to convict her of some
complicity in the development of modern poetry.

P. 53. gloves”. It is recorded in Mrs.

Orr’s Life of Browning that he wore lemon-
coloured gloves. Mrs. Bridell-Fox, meeting him in
1835-65 says, ‘‘he was then slim and dark, and very
handsome, and — may I hint it — just a trifle of a
dandy, addicted to lemon-coloured kid gloves and
such things”.

P. 71. “He was stolen.” As a matter of fact, Flush
was stolen three times; but the unities seem to
require that the three stealings shall be compressed
into one. The total sum paid by Miss Barrett to the
dog-stealers was £20,

P. 9*2. “The faces of those men were to come back
to her on a sunny balcony in Italy.” Readers of
Aurora Leigh — but since such persons are non-
existent it must be explained that Mrs. Browning
wrote a poem of this name, one of the most
vivid passages in which (though it suffers from
distortion natural to an artist who sees the object
once only from a four-wheeler, with Wilson tugging
at her skirts) is the description of a London slum.
Clearly Mrs. Browning possessed a fund of curiosity
as to human life which was by no means satisfied
by the busts of Homer and Chaucer on the washing-
stand in the bedroom.

P. 109. “Lily Wilson fell in love with Signor
Righi, the guardsman.” The life of Lily Wilson is

NOTES

155

extremely obscure and thus cries aloud for the
services of a biographer. No human figure in the
Browning letters, save the principals, more excites
our curiosity and baffles it. Her Christian name
was Lily, her surname Wilson. That is all we know
of her birth and upbringing. Whether she was the
daughter of a farmer in the neighbourhood of
Hope End, and became favourably known to the
Barrett cook by the decency of her demeanour and
the cleanliness of her apron, so much so that when
she came up to the great house on some errand,
Mrs. Barrett made an excuse to come into the room
just then and thought so well of her that she ap-
pointed her to be Miss Elizabeth’s maid; or whether
she was a Cockney; or whether she was from Scot-
land — it is impossible to say. At any rate she was
in service with Miss Barrett in the year 1846. She
was ‘‘an expensive servant” — her wages were ;^i6
a year. Since she spoke almost as seldom as Flush,
the outlines of her character are little known;
and since Miss Barrett never wrote a poem about
her, her appearance is far less familiar than his.
Yet it is clear from indications in the letters that
she was in the beginning one of those demure,
almost inhumanly correct British maids who were
at that time the glory of the British basement. It
is obvious that Wilson was a stickler for rights
and ceremonies. Wilson undoubtedly revered “the
room”; Wilson would have been the first to insist

156

FLUSH

that under servants must eat their pudding in one
place, upper servants in another. All this is im-
plicit in the remark she made when she beat Flush
with her hand ' ‘because it is right”. Such respect
for convention, it need hardly be said, breeds
extreme horror of any breach of it; so that when
Wilson was confronted with the lower orders in
Manning Street she was far more alarmed, and far
more certain that the dog-stealers were murderers,
than Miss Barrett was. At the same time the heroic
way in which she overcame her terror and went
with Miss Barrett in the cab shows how deeply the
other convention of loyalty to her mistress was in-
grained in her. Where Miss Barrett went, Wilson
must go too. This principle was triumphantly
demonstrated by her conduct at the time of the
elopement. Miss Barrett had been doubtful of
Wilson’s courage; but her doubts were unfounded.
“Wilson”, she wrote — and these were the last
words she ever wrote to Mr, Browning as Miss
Barrett — “has been perfect to me. And 7 . . . calling
her ‘timid’ and afraid of her timidity! I begin to
think that none are so bold as the timid, when
they are fairly roused.” It is worth, parenthetically,
dwelling for a second on the extreme precarious-
ness of a servant’s life. If Wilson had not gone with
Miss Barrett, she would have been, as Miss Barrett
knew, “turned into the street before sunset”, with
only a few shillings, presumably, saved from her

NOTES

157

sixteen pounds a year. And what then would have
been her fate? Since English fiction in the 'forties
scarcely deals with the lives of ladies' maids, and
biography had not then cast its searchlight so low,
the question must remain a question. But Wilson
took the plunge. She declared that she would “go
anywhere in the world with me". She left the base-
ment, the room, the whole of that world of Wimpole
Street, which to Wilson meant all civilisation, all
right thinking and decent living, for the wild
debauchery and irreligion of a foreign land.
Nothing is more curious than to observe the con-
flict that took place in Italy between Wilson's
English gentility and her natural passions. She
derided the Italian Court; she was shocked by
Italian pictures. But, though “she was struck back
by the indecency of the Venus", Wilson, greatly
to her credit, seems to have bethought her that
women are naked when they take their clothes off.
Even I myself, she may have thought, am naked
for two or three seconds daily. And so “She thinks
she shall try again, and the troublesome modesty
may subside, who knows?" That it did subside
rapidly is plain. Soon she not merely approved of
Italy; she had fallen in love with Signor Righi of
the Grand Ducal bodyguard — “all highly respect-
able and moral men, and some six feet high" —
was wearing an engagement ring; was dismissing
a London suitor; and was learning to speak Italian.

158

FLUSH

Then the clouds descend again; when they lift they
show us Wilson deserted — ‘'the faithless Righi had
backed out of his engagement to Wilson’’. Suspicion
attaches to his brother, a wholesale haberdasher
at Prato. When Righi resigned from the Ducal
bodyguard, he became, on his brother’s advice, a
retail haberdasher at Prato. Whether his position
required a knowledge of haberdashery in his wife,
whether one of the girls of Prato could supply it,
it is certain that he did not write to Wilson as often
as he should have done. But what conduct it was
on the part of this highly respectable and moral
man that led Mrs. Browning to exclaim in 1850,
“[Wilson] is over it completely, which does the
greatest credit to her good sense and rectitude of
character. How could she continue to love such a
man?” — why Righi had shrunk to “such a man”
in so short a time, it is impossible to say. Deserted
by Righi, Wilson became more and more attached
to the Browning family. She discharged not only
the duties of a lady’s maid, but cooked knead cakes,
made dresses, and became a devoted nurse to
Pcnini, the baby; so that in time the baby himself
exalted her to the rank of the family, where she
justly belonged, and refused to call her anything
but Lily. In 1855 Wilson married Romagnoli, the
Brownings’ manservant, “a good tender-hearted
man”; and for some time the two kept house for
the Brownings. But in 1859 Robert Browning

NOTES

159

‘‘accepted office as Landor’s guardian”, an office
of great delicacy and responsibility, for Landor’s
habits were difficult; “of restraint he has not a
grain”, Mrs. Browning wrote, “and of suspicious-
ness many grains”. In these circumstances Wilson
was appointed “his duenna” with a salary of
twenty- two pounds a year “besides what is left of
his rations”. Later her wages were increased to
thirty pounds, for to act as duenna to “an old
lion” who has “the impulses of a tiger”, throws his
plate out of the window or dashes it on the ground
if he dislikes his dinner, and suspects servants of
opening desks, entailed, as Mrs. Browning observed,
“certain risks, and I for one would rather not meet
them”. But to Wilson, who had known Mr. Barrett
and the spirits, a few plates more or less flying out
of the window or dashed upon the floor was a
matter of little consequence — such risks were all
in the day’s work.

That day, so far as it is still visible to us, was
certainly a strange one. Whether it began or not
in some remote English village, it ended in Venice
in the Palazzo Rezzonico. There at least she was
still living in the year 1897, a widow, in the house
of the little boy whom she had nursed and loved —
Mr. Barrett Browning. A very strange day it had
been, she may have thought, as she sat in the red
Venetian sunset, an old woman, dreaming. Her
friends, married to farm hands, still stumbled up

i6o

FLUSH

the English lanes to fetch a pint of beer. And she
had eloped with Miss Barrett to Italy; she had seen
all kinds of queer things — revolutions, guardsmen,
spirits; Mr. Landor throwing his plate out of the
window. Then Mrs. Browning had died — there can
have been no lack of thoughts in Wilson’s old head
as she sat at the window of the Palazzo Rezzonico
in the evening. But nothing can be more vain than
to pretend that we can guess what they were, for
she was typical of the great army of her kind
— the inscrutable, the all-but-silent, the all-but-
invisible servant maids of history. “A more honest,
true and affectionate heart than Wilson’s cannot
be found” — her mistress’s words may serve her for
epitaph.

P. 125. '‘he was scourged by fleas”. It appears
that Italy was famous for its fleas in the middle
of the nineteenth century. Indeed, they served
to break down conventions that were otherwise
insurmountable. For example, when Nathaniel
Hawthorne went to tea with Miss Bremer in Rome
(1858), "we spoke of fleas — insects that, in Rome,
come home to everybody’s business and bosom,
and are so common and inevitable, that no deli-
cacy is felt about alluding to the sufferings they
inflict. Poor little Miss Bremer was tormented with
one while turning out our tea. ...”

P. 131. "Nero had leapt from a top storey
window.” Nero (r. 1849-60) was, according to

NOTES

l6l

Carlyle, “A little Cuban (Maltese? and otherwise
mongrel) shock, mostly white — a most aflfectionate,
lively little dog, otherwise of small merit, and little or
no training”. Material for a life of him abounds,
but this is not the occasion to make use of it. It is
enough to say that he was stolen; that he brought
Carlyle a cheque to buy a horse with tied round
his neck; that ''twice or thrice I flung him into the
sea [at Aberdour], which he didn’t at all like”;
that in 1850 he sprang from the library window,
and, clearing the area spikes, fell "plash” on to the
pavement. "It was after breakfast,” Mrs. Carlyle
says, "and he had been standing at the open
window, watching the birds. . . . Lying in my bed,
I heard thro’ the deal partition Elizabeth scream:
Oh Godl oh Nerol and rush downstairs like a
strong wind out at the street door . . . then I sprang
to meet her in my night-shift. . . . Mr. C. came
down from his bedroom with his chin all over soap
and asked, 'Has anything happened to Nero?’ —
'Oh, sir, he must have broken all his legs, he leapt
out zXyour window 1 ’ — 'God bless me!’ said Mr. C,
and returned to finish his shaving.” No bones were
broken, however, and he survived, to be run over
by a butcher’s cart, and to die at last from the
effects of the accident on ist February i860. He
is buried at the top of the garden at Cheyne Row
under a small stone tablet.

Whether he wished to kill himself, or whether,

as Mrs. Carlyle insinuates, he was merely jumping
after birds, might be the occasion for an extremely
interesting treatise on canine psychology. Some
hold that Byron’s dog went mad in sympathy with
Byron; others that Nero was driven to desperate
melancholy by associating with Mr. Carlyle. The
whole question of dogs’ relation to the spirit of the
age, whether it is possible to call one dog Eliza-
bethan, another Augustan, another Victorian, to-
gether with the influence upon dogs of the poetry
and philosophy of their masters, deserves a fuller
discussion than can here be given it. For the
present, Nero’s motives must remain obscure.

P. 1 41 . ‘‘Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton believed him-
self invisible.” Mrs. Huth Jackson in A Victorian
Childhood says: “Lord Arthur Russell told me, many
years later, that when a small boy he was taken to
Knebworth by his mother. Next morning he was
in the big hall having breakfast when a strange-
looking old gentleman in a shabby dressing-gown
came in and walked slowly round the table staring
at each of the guests in turn. He heard his mother’s
neighbour whisper to her, ‘Do not take any notice,
he thinks he is invisible’. It was Lord Lytton
himself” (pp. 17-18).

P. 150. “he was now dead”. It is certain that
Flush died; but the date and manner of his death
are unknown. The only reference consists in the
statement that “Flush lived to a good old age and

NOTES

163

is buried in the vaults of Casa Guidi”. Mrs. Brown-
ing was buried in the English Cemetery at Florence,
Robert Browning in Westminster Abbey. Flush
still lies, therefore, beneath the house in which,
once upon a time, the Brownings lived.

XHE END